


the mothering thing of us

by QuickYoke, ratherembarrassing



Series: to be a mother and be gone [1]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-03-31 23:56:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 59,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3998056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickYoke/pseuds/QuickYoke, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratherembarrassing/pseuds/ratherembarrassing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Black and White Ball was a masquerade ball held on November 28, 1966 at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Hosted by author Truman Capote, the ball was in honor of The Washington Post publisher, Katharine Graham. -- Director Carter attends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_And not even a muddled angel will_

_peek down at us in our foxhole._

_And He will not have time_

_to send down an eyedropper of prayer for us,_

_the mothering thing of us,_

_as we drip into the soup_

_and drown_

_in the worry festering inside us,_

_lest our children_

_go so fast_

_they go._

_“The Child Bearers” by Anne Sexton_

 

* * *

"How 'bout it, Peg? It's been forever since we danced."

When he decides on something, Howard truly is one of the most insufferable people Peggy has the pleasure of dealing with on a day-to-day basis. She sighs loudly so he knows she's annoyed, but she does put the file down and tip her chair back to grant him her full attention.

In truth, Howard may be the best friend she has. He's certainly the longest by some years, and in the nearly 20 years since they began SHIELD together, she has only truly wanted to punch him in the mouth once. Once a year. All right, maybe once a week, but that is only because she can see his office from hers and he likes to annoy her through the glass.

But he does care, and he makes sure she does manage to leave the office and interact with the real world from time to time. Apparently that time has come around again.

"What is this thing?"

Howard knows he's got her, if his smug grin is anything to go by. "Capote's throwing a ball. You got anything in black and white?"

She does. "I think I wore it to the last event you dragged me to."

"The black number with the—" Howard waves his hands down his sides. "The thing?"

"Yes, Howard." Peggy sighs again, and throws in an eyeroll for good measure. She remembers what he said when he first saw her that evening, and how much her knuckles hurt after she punched him for it.

“Peg,” Howard says, suddenly serious. He moves around her desk and takes a seat on the notepad she’s been using. “Come on, it’s only for a couple of hours.”

“It’s never just a couple of hours with you, Howard.”

“Well, you could use more than a couple of hours break.” His eyes flick to the couch against the wall, and the pile of blankets and pillows stacked neatly at the end. “When did you last go home?”

She honestly doesn’t know. “Fine,” she says, because it’s the easier answer to give.

"Excellent!" Howard claps his hands together once, standing to leave. "Oh, and don't worry." He pauses in the doorway. "I'll bring the masks."

"Howard!"

Truly insufferable. 

* * *

The car rolls up to the front of the Plaza, and the pop of flashbulbs through the dark glass reminds Peggy that she is attending this event with Howard Stark: Playboy Billionaire, and not the man who throws wadded up balls of paper at her from his office across the hall when he gets stuck and drinks too much.

“Smile for the cameras, Peg.”

She hates this version of Howard.

The photographers are only interested in Howard when they emerge from the car, and after a handful of photos Peggy goes on ahead, leaving him to bathe in the assault of illumination from the dim entry hall on the other side. It is filled with people that even Peggy isn’t so disconnected from the world of celebrity as to not recognise their faces, even with all the masks in place.

Howard joins her eventually, finding her loitering at the periphery as people stream through into the main ballroom. “Here,” he says, and hands over her own mask. “You forgot this.”

 Peggy takes it from him, but doesn’t put it on. “Actually I didn’t. Can we please get a drink now?”

 "What's up with you?" Howard asks later, holding her at a respectable distance as they move around the dance floor. He's been frowning at her since she ignored Frank Sinatra. "I'd say you've been distracted lately, but lately's been more like forever."

 “I’m getting closer, Howard,” she says, leaning closer to his ear. “I’m getting so close.”

“C’mon, Peggy. You’ve been saying that for years.”

And oh, how she wishes that wasn't true.

“It’s different this time.” She wishes she knew that were true, and hopes it turns out to be. It's hard to imagine she could keep on without that hope. The things she has sacrificed demand that one day it all have been worth it.

“For your sake, I hope you’re right.” He twirls them around the dance floor. “But HYDRA can wait for the night.”

"Must they?" Peggy ducks her head, resting her temple against Howard’s shoulder for a moment. “I’ve had enough of parties to last me a lifetime, Howard.”

“Don’t lie, Pegs. You had fun at Daniel’s wedding. He coughed up for the good liquor.”   

She did not have fun at Daniel’s wedding, and the fact that Howard thinks so says more about his understanding of women than it does about Peggy.

They dance through two more songs before Howard declares they need more drinks. Peggy declares she's going back to the office. She's given him more than an hour of her time, and in all truth she's surprised not to have already been abandoned by him for one of the multitude of shiny young things floating around. It's how she usually escapes these things.

"Pegs, come on. We're having a nice time, aren't we?" His winsome face does little to hide his unexpected concern for her.

She truly doesn't think it is warranted. Yes, she's been working harder than ever, but she does believe what she said — SHIELD is getting closer than ever, and she can't let that slip away this time.

"Howard, please." She sighs, but it isn't at him. It's at herself. "I've had a lovely evening. Please enjoy the rest of it."

Thankfully, Howard doesn't argue any further, but she promises herself she will do something to lessen his concern… another time.

At the edge of the main ballroom, Peggy blinks through the haze of low chandelier lighting and cigarette smoke, trying to see a way clear through the press of people. Her shoes are pinching and she really does want to get through the latest reports from the Syrian border.

"Peggy," someone says, touching her arm, and a flash of light from a nearby photographer blinds her for a second.

Her days in the field are significantly less than what they once were, but she keeps up her training and would give most of her agents a run for their money on the days when she's had enough coffee and a good night's sleep.

So she is distantly surprised when her body doesn't react as she would expect. Quite the opposite; she doesn't react at all.

She would know the heat of that touch anywhere, knows it somewhere visceral before she even thinks the name, and when the sparkle of light clears from her eyes, she is astounded to find Angie Martinelli gazing up at her, exactly as Peggy knew she would be.

"Angie," she breathes, a smile breaking her face in a way that feels familiar and utterly foreign. "My goodness."

Angie beams at her, steps in close and pulls her into a hug that Peggy returns too tightly. It has been an age since they last saw each other, and Angie still smells exactly as Peggy remembers.

Eighteen years is a long time to forget something so intangible, but standing in Angie's embrace she feels something she didn't even know was there, tight and twisted inside of her, unspool as she exhales, a sound of happiness trickling out with it.

Someone bumps into her, or maybe into Angie, and even then she doesn't let go right away. When they do part, Angie's hands smooth down both of Peggy's arms to take her hands and keep her close. "Wouldya' take a look at you, Peg. My god!"

Peggy is forty-six years old, and the look Angie gives her makes her blush.

"You don't look so bad yourself," Peggy says, taking in the slink of black satin draped about Angie's body, the flare of her eyeliner and the sculpture of her hair. Angie is a vision, and Peggy cannot look away.

She never could.

Time has been incredibly kind to Angie, and for a moment Peggy wonders what Angie sees in the lines beginning around her own eyes, the thread of grey through her hair that she is too proud to color away. It isn't much, but Peggy knows they are there, these marks of time. She can't see any in Angie; it's as though she has stepped straight out of Peggy's memory.

"Shoot," Angie says, snapping Peggy out of her thoughts. "You're not working are you?" Angie glances about like she's expecting someone to jump out at them from the crowd of mingling celebrities of varying stripes.

Peggy laughs, because even after all these years Angie still finds Peggy's job to be something incredible. "Not tonight, although I am here with Howard."

She is about to ask what Angie herself is doing there when her brain catches up to where they are. She isn't ignorant to the rise of Angie's career; last Peggy heard Angie was dating Peter Lawford and about to make a movie with Mike Nichols. A long time ago she stepped right by the lights of Broadway and into the Hollywood spotlight. As Peggy looks about them, she suddenly notices that people are in fact watching them. Or rather, they are watching Angie, and wondering who on earth Peggy is to have arrived on Howard Stark's arm and to receive such a very warm greeting from Angie. This is Angela Martin's world, Peggy is merely a visitor for tonight.

Angie's face falls at Peggy's words. "Are the two of you—"

"What?" Peggy all but squawks at the suggestion. "No!"

"Oh my god, Peg, that was seriously in my head for a minute there." Angie rolls her eyes, and for a moment Peggy is sitting at the counter of the L&L, listening to Angie talk about her day. Angie touches Peggy's wrist, fingers curling around tendons and veins. "Let's go grab us some drinks and a corner."

She doesn't let go of Peggy's wrist, and they move through the crowd tethered to one another, the people watching as they go forgotten in the feel of Angie's hold.

* * *

The crowd milling about the bar parts for Angie, Peggy content to drift along in her wake, and they have drinks in hand before they even ask. There's a low couch at the back of the room, and somehow they find seats there too, knees touching and Angie's arm draped across the seat back.

"You know, I nearly didn't even come tonight. But my manager was all 'You gotta get on Capote's good side!'" Angie makes a sound of amusement. "Peg, I'm not even sure he _has_ a good side."

"Well I'm glad you did. It's been far too long."

"I don't even want to think about how many years it's been," Angie says, following it with a tiny sip of her drink as she takes Peggy in. "Jesus, you look exactly the same. What have you been doing with yourself?"

Peggy thinks about lying, and discards the idea at once. "I work a lot," she says instead with a giddy honestly that Angie has always inspired in her.

"You still at... the same place?"

Peggy nods, swallowing a sip of her whisky. "I am."

"That doesn't surprise me. Never could see you doing anything else, not even when I didn't actually know what it was you did." Angie takes another drink, switches her glass between hands to do so, and then lays her arm back across the couch, fingers touching Peggy's shoulder, thumb brushing at the hollow of her clavicle. "Sometimes I see stuff on the news or in the newspaper, and I think it has to be you."

"Like what?" It isn't what she wants to ask, but anything more would be too much and she is distracted by the feel of those clever fingers. "Not that I could confirm or deny anything."

Angie grins at that, all slow and warm, and Peggy swallows half her drink.

"Just stuff that seems like there might have been a lot of danger." Angie shrugs then, and looks away. "I'd say a prayer, just in case."

"I'm not so sure anyone is listening," Peggy murmurs, and Angie's fingers become a grip against her arm for a moment. "But thank you for the thought."

Angie rubs her arm and Peggy can't stop herself from leaning into it. In this little corner, with everyone standing above them, there is no one watching as Peggy forgets that she was on her way out the door not too long ago.

"And you," she says, although their silence had been comfortable, waving her hand at Angie's... everything.

"I know right? Look at me. Who would have thought it." Angie's self-deprecation is charming, but Peggy can tell she's pleased by the words.

"I thought it. I always knew you would make it."

Angie takes another sip of her drink. "Anything else you think back then?"

If there was one thing Peggy could always count on, it was Angie's ability to dive right into something Peggy's happy to leave swirling around her like so much smoke and fog. That nothing about that has changed has Peggy scooting forward on their couch, leg brushing against Angie's, eager to hear what else she has to say about—

"Pegs!" Howard's booming voice is followed by his person, dropping down onto the arm Peggy had just been leaning against. "I thought you'd split. Hey, I know you!" he says at Angie, attention completely distracted from Peggy now.

Truly, all she ever seems to do around Howard is sigh. Thankfully, Angie is taking this interruption in her stride, hiding a chuckle behind her glass.

"Howard, this is Angela Martin."

At the name, Angie glances at her curiously, though Peggy doesn't see why it's so surprising that she would know Angie's stage name. Everyone else in the world certainly does.

Howard leans forward, squinting at Angie for a moment. "Nah, you're that gal that used to live in my penthouse with— With you!" He even jabs Peggy in the shoulder.

"Nice to see you again, Howie."

"Geeze, it is you." He frowns, eyes darting between the two of them. "Am I interrupting something?"

"Yes." Peggy can't tell if it was her or Angie that spoke first.

"Well that's too bad," Howard says, getting to his feet as there is a chime from somewhere that sets off a murmur of dinner. "Allow me, ladies."

"Thank god," Angie says, accepting Howard's assistance. "I'm starving."

Peggy stands as well, and if her fingers brush against Angie's before Howard inserts himself between them, she cannot honestly say she didn't mean to do it.

* * *

The tables are scattered in such a haphazard fashion about the dance floor, Peggy suspects it was done entirely on purpose. People are clumped about, not overly concerned about whether they are actually at a table or between two, and Howard shoos a couple of them out of the way to claim a table for himself like the king of his own little castle.

Peggy pulls out a chair, not quite certain she knows what she's doing, and Angie very nearly looks charmed as she takes a seat, nudging Peggy's shoulder when Peggy takes the seat beside her.

"How is it possible you're still as sweet as ever?" Angie asks, turned towards Peggy's ear so none of the people joining their table can hear.

"I think the last time I was sweet to anyone was 1949."

If Angie wasn't charmed by the act of unnecessary chivalry with the chair, she is by this.

A plate of food appears before each of them, and Howard makes an obscene sound of pleasure. "Ina's chicken," he says, as if that is supposed to mean anything, and shoves a fork-full into his mouth. "Teddy," he shouts around the mouthful, "get over here!"

"Stark," the Senator says, taking a seat. "Director Carter."

Peggy can't suppress her sigh, and Howard elbows her from her right, while she can hear Angie snicker on her left. She probably thinks Peggy is annoyed at being interrupted. Which she is, but honestly, she’d hoped never to see Teddy again after that disaster at the Chicago Symphony.

She sighs again.

Angie's hand, hidden beneath the table, settles on Peggy's knee with intention, and Peggy forgets all about Teddy. Angie's thumb brushes back and forth in time to the music still coming from the band up the front. Peggy darts a glance in her direction, but Angie's watching the room as if the people passing around them is the only interesting thing happening at that moment, while Howard and Teddy bluster at each other and ignore them entirely.

Throughout the evening, the band, an orchestra really with strings and brass, have made their way through big band numbers, blues, and even some show tunes. But as Angie measures out the beat against the curve of bone, Peggy realises they have moved on to the old standards; songs she would have heard on the radio, sitting at the L&L back in the day.

Angie glances at her out of the corner of her eye, then turns back to people watching. "I wonder what Miriam Fry's doing these days," she wonders aloud.

All at once, it's too much, this evening and the music and Angie sitting beside her, and Peggy laughs from somewhere deep and unused in a very long time. She hasn't thought of Miriam Fry in as many days as they've been gone from the Griffith. When she catches her breath again, Angie's snickering too, in a way that warms Peggy like nothing she's known in forever, and she touches Angie's hand, holds it against her knee and hopes Angie can read on her face the things she can't say here.

The hand she's gripping pulls loose, and then Peggy feels it return, their fingers lacing together. Angie ducks her head for a moment, almost as if in prayer, then lets go of Peggy's hand and slips away from the table, her fingers brushing against Peggy as she goes.

Maybe someone is listening tonight.

Peggy waits a beat before she sets her napkin on the table and stands without excusing herself. No one pays any attention to her as she makes her way towards the door Angie disappeared through. She stops when she reaches it, and then takes a deliberate step through.

The hallway is wide and empty, with the exception of two people sitting on the stairs at the far end of the hall, sharing a cigarette.

Peggy looks around, and then heads towards the powder room entrance tucked away in a corner, pushing the door open with a more force than entirely necessary.

"Took you long enough," Angie says from where she is leaning against the arm of a couch, her reflection in the mirror opposite glittering in the lights scattered about the sitting area.

A twist of Peggy's wrist and the door is locked, and then a handful of strides and she's touching Angie's face, her neck and shoulder and hair, and either Peggy pulls her up or Angie stands, but they're standing so close together that all Angie has to do is tilt her head back and they're kissing.

Peggy would like to think that as far as first kisses go, it's fairly spectacular.

Eighteen years is a long time to wait to finally kiss someone for the first time, but Angie's lips part and draw Peggy in like they've done this every day since 1946, but she can't regret that it took this long when, even after all this time, the force of her want overwhelms her. Had she known it would be this good though, to press Angie closer and have her come willingly, arms tangling around Peggy's neck and fingers threading through her hair, Peggy might not have let it all slip through her fingers so easily back then.

"This is crazy," Angie gasps when they break apart, her breath hot against Peggy's mouth.

"Absolutely bonkers," she agrees, close to gasping as Angie scratches the back of her head.

There's a beat of silence, Angie leaning back to blink wide-eyed and serious at Peggy's own forcefully composed expression, but Peggy's mouth twitches and Angie snickers and they both crumple into laughter, swaying into each other helplessly.

Angie touches her cheek, as if afraid she may break Peggy somehow. "English," she says, voice catching, and buries herself against Peggy's neck.

She cannot even pretend she doesn't want this, and it would seem neither can Angie. That they're both so mutually swept away in the moment is more comforting to Peggy than she would ever have imagined, or indeed would ever like to admit.

It's enough for Peggy forget to think this really is absolutely bonkers, and let herself do something she never fully acknowledged she wanted when she first could have had it.

From the ballroom, the faintest strains of music can still be heard over the sound of her heart beating thunderously, something slow and brassy, and their movement together falls into the rhythm. Angie, breathing out happy sounds against Peggy's neck, drags her fingers down Peggy's arm until their hands are touching from heel to fingertip.

"Dance with me," Peggy says, bringing their joined hands up.

In 1946, on the first night they shared Howard's penthouse, Angie had asked Peggy that very question. The gramophone in the parlour had been irresistible to Angie, giddy and overwhelmed by her new home, and as the vinyl had crackled before the needle found music, Angie had held out her hand for Peggy to join her.

Peggy had joined her; they _had_ danced. But like so many times before that and the infinite number of times after, there was always a tomorrow to leap into the void, and eventually she had said her goodnights and gone upstairs to her own bedroom, where she had spent all her nights in that home.

Behind locked doors it’s as though no time has passed at all. The party fades into the background until there’s only this moment, the suggestion of music muted through the walls, Angie’s fingers stroking along the nape of her neck, curling around a lock of dark hair. Unlike that first time they’d danced however -- which had involved actual dancing -- now they just sway, a gentle rocking, bodies brushing lightly.

Peggy studies the flecks of light reflected in Angie’s eyes, the near invisible dusting of freckles beneath layers of makeup. Angie’s once perfect lipstick is smeared rakishly at one corner, and as soon as the thought of kissing it away appears in her mind Peggy’s already leaning down and doing so. She drags her teeth across Angie’s lower lip, and feels Angie step closer, pressing them flush together.

When they break apart, Angie’s cheeks are rosy and her mouth is a carmine smear, her eyes wide and feverish. “You want to - I mean -” she pauses to clear her throat, and the tip of her tongue darts out to wet her lower lip. “I have a room upstairs. It's a bit nicer than...”

"A fancy loo?" Peggy finishes, momentarily overwhelmed.

Angie laughs softly, but she tugs at Peggy's gown where her fingers had been grasping at the fabric, silently bringing her back to the question.

Before she has enough time for her good sense to fully kick back into gear and over analyse the situation, Peggy nods. In return she’s rewarded with a beaming yet impish smile from Angie that has her stomach swooping like she missed a step climbing the stairs. Then Angie grabs her by the hand and pulls her out of the room.

They cross the now empty hallway, the pair from the stairs gone. Peggy wonders fleetingly how long they had been locked away in there, but can't really bring herself to care.

Even as they skirt around the edges of the party, dodging state officials and photographers and actors, Angie doesn’t let go of Peggy’s hand. It’s only when they sneak into the elevator -- where Angie punches a button for one of the top floors where all the suites are located -- that she loosens her grip, but even then it’s to slide her fingers up Peggy’s palm and toy at the soft skin of her wrist.

They don’t look at each other the whole ride up. They simply stand together, facing the doors, eyes fixed on the light counting each floor, and Peggy is driven to distraction by the way Angie’s fingertips draw little patterns across her veins. The doors slide open and Angie pulls away to fish around in her handbag for the room key while they walk down the hall to stand in front of the cream-coloured door. As Angie slides the key into the lock, Peggy studies the line of her neck and shoulder revealed by the clinging drape of black satin. She leans forward much closer than necessary to sweep aside a stray lock of hair, and Angie gives an involuntary shiver. Then with the tumbler clicking open, they’re inside.

Any hesitation Peggy may have felt disappeared back in the downstairs powder room. She bows her head to brush her lips against the smooth skin of Angie’s shoulder, and Angie gives a breathless little curse when the lock refuses to cooperate and stow them safely away in the suite. Peggy skims her hands down Angie’s sides, coming to rest at her hips, and finally the door is locked once more.

Angie rounds on her, leaving the key dangling from the door. She’s wearing high enough heels that she only has to tip her head back for their mouths to meet again, except this time her clever fingers wander in new directions. Angie's hands move with deliberation, starting at Peggy's waist and working their way up, settling on her breasts in a way that has her breaking their kiss to gasp from the feeling.

"You're very good at that," Peggy says, forehead resting against Angie's as she tries and fails to catch her breath.

"What can I say," Angie says, nipping at Peggy's bottom lip. "I'm feeling inspired." And then Angie kisses her again, and Peggy loses herself in the feel of Angie under her own hands.

She's trying to gather enough thoughts about her to wonder how she might get Angie out of this dress that had once seemed like a masterpiece and is now beginning to feel like an obstacle, when Angie finds the zipper between Peggy’s shoulder blades, dragging it down and slipping her hand inside.

Peggy pulls back just enough for the dress to slide from her shoulders before she kisses Angie again, leaving the dress still half on. They’re getting messy now, breaths escaping in heavy wisps as Peggy trails a series of nips down the column of Angie’s throat, but she forces herself to focus enough to at least get the black satin dress bunching at Angie’s hip as Peggy rucks it up her thighs, and they haven’t even left the foyer.

"In a million years," Angie says, voice soft and hot against Peggy's ear. "No, in a _billion_ years, this isn't how I thought this was ever gonna go between us."

"Truly?" Peggy pulls back to take in Angie's expression. "But you said downstairs—"

Angie stops her with a press of lips. "I thought about it. Plenty. Then, now, a bunch in between." Her fingers trace across Peggy's cheek, the line of her jaw to her throat. "It wasn't me I was worried about, English."

"You needn't have worried, Angie. Not about this."

Angie kisses her again, and it's different now. The heat remains, but there’s a languid quality that was lacking earlier. Before it was rushed, this sort of desperate push and pull borne across eighteen years of wanting. Now it’s -- and Peggy hesitates to even think it -- _content_.

She can’t remember the last time she felt anything along the lines of contentment, and it should frighten her but it doesn’t. With anyone else perhaps. But not Angie.

Angie nudges the dress down over Peggy's hips, letting it fall to puddle around Peggy’s feet, and then releases the catch of her own dress at the back of her neck. The entire thing slithers to the floor without any encouragement. They part just enough to speak, still breathing the same warm air.

“Should we -?” Peggy starts to say, but she doesn’t need to finish the thought.

Angie nods. “Yeah.”

They mean to adjourn to the bedroom, but in the end they don’t make it that far. Peggy follows Angie, who is walking sideways to keep Peggy in her sights as though afraid this were all a dream and that Peggy would dissolve into the ether, when she bumps into the side of the couch. With a huff of laughter shared between them, Peggy traps Angie against the couch's arm, pinning her there with her hips.

Kissing her again, Peggy’s hands sneak around to fumble at the clasp of Angie’s lacy brassiere. With her own, it’s always easy to unhook, but by some unearthly paradox she struggles now. After a full minute she curses under her breath, and Angie laughs, a rich, full-bellied sound.

Eighteen years, and she’s stumped by a damn brassiere.

“Allow me.” Angie grins and kisses away the downturned twist of Peggy’s mouth before unhooking the offending article and tossing it aside.

"I can manage them quite well under normal circumstances, thank you very much,” Peggy grumbles, but it peters out as she glances down Angie's length, and then again for more than just a glance. "Well then."

Angie looks like she’s going to make another quippy remark, but Peggy interrupts her, lowering her head to taste Angie's skin. As she mouths across the top of Angie’s breast, Angie squeezes at her shoulders, fiddling with the straps there, tracing them down across the strong planes of Peggy’s back. Without any difficulty at all she unhooks Peggy’s brassiere, and in any other circumstance Peggy might have been a bit miffed. Currently preoccupied however, she allows Angie to slip it down her arms, where it drops to the carpet.

Angie’s thumb flicks across a nipple, and Peggy jerks. Ducking her head, she gives the sensitive skin of Angie’s wrist an admonishing nibble.

"I want to taste you," Peggy says against Angie's skin, and she can feel the ripple of pleasure through Angie at the words, ending in a nod of approval.

Angie catches her thumbs in the top of her knickers, pushing them down to kick away with a flick of her foot and a cheeky grin when Peggy hums in amusement as she releases the clasps on the garters, before winding her arms around Angie to release the scrap of a belt. "There we go," she says against Angie's ear, still wrapped around her.

Angie’s legs part as Peggy kneels down. With a stuttering inhalation she props one leg up on the arm of the couch while Peggy nips along her inner thigh. The forwardness makes Peggy moan against Angie's thigh, and Angie chuckles, cupping Peggy's cheek fondly.

"You alright down there, English?"

She’s slick under Peggy’s mouth, and at that first touch Peggy is rewarded with a sharp hiss and that hand sliding into her hair. Pulling back with a grin, Peggy replies, “Does that answer your question?”

Angie gives a distracted nod, blinking furiously, but Peggy can tell she's barely restraining herself from tugging at her hair impatiently. "Peg," she says, voice rough  and strained, "haven't I waited long enough?"

She has. They both have.

With a wordless hum Peggy resumes, relishing the jump of muscle in Angie’s thigh followed by a long shaky sigh. She teases out gasps with little circles of her tongue interspersed with broad flat strokes, and soon Angie’s fingers are trembling and grazing along her scalp. Much too soon.

Peggy slows, glancing up to catch a glimpse of Angie biting her lip, eyebrows slanted down at hard angles. She allows her to plateau off, keeping her on edge with a light pressure that still sends a shiver across Angie’s flushed skin. When she slips two fingers easily inside, Angie gives a high breathy moan that has Peggy’s other hand grasping at her knee.

Every time Angie begins to rock her hips, Peggy eases off. She means to make it last -- she really does -- but at one point not long into the fourth time she brings Angie close to the edge, Angie’s grip in her hair tightens.

“I swear to god,” Angie pants, eyes clenched shut, “you better finish this time, or I’ll -”

She’s cut off with an abrupt hiss. The heel of one foot digs into the small of Peggy’s back, and every muscle goes taut. She’s quieter than Peggy thought she would be, teeth clenched, coming with a series of strangled gasps that catch in her chest and throat.  

When her body shudders and stills, Peggy leans back to pepper her inner thigh with open-mouthed kisses, fingers still buried inside, pressing upwards. Slowly she withdraws her hand, and when she looks up Angie is catching her breath, head tipped back. Standing, Peggy skims her teeth along the long line of Angie’s shoulder and neck, ending with a nip and a kiss at the soft spot just below her ear.

The single point of contact expands into a multitude as Angie sways forward, their breasts dragging against each other, the curve of Peggy's hips against the jut of Angie's, thighs barely brushing, and Angie's cheek against her own.

"That was mean," Angie says, teeth sinking into the side of Peggy's throat.

Her fingers grasp at Angie's waist, only just stopping her hips from rutting against Angie in a moment of desperation. "Was it really, though?"

"Yes," Angie laughs, untangling them to step back. "Bedroom now, please."

The bed that greets them is decadently large, to the point of stopping Peggy in the entryway. She's certainly no prude, but a bed like this exists for a purpose, and that purpose is now playing out in Peggy's mind in vivid detail.

Angie has crawled the length of the bed, and takes a place against the mountain of pillows, sinking into them with a pleased little sigh. "What are you doing all the way over there?" She extends her hand in Peggy's direction, waving her over.

"I haven't the foggiest, to be honest."

Peggy falls across the expanse of mattress, pressing a single kiss against Angie's thigh where it rests within easy reach.

"Get up here," Angie says, and Peggy is all too happy to comply, crawling the rest of the way and over Angie's body, hands on either side of her shoulders, knees at her hips. Angie tugs at her knickers, letting it snap against her skin. "Can you get all this off? I know you had trouble before—"

"Oh, stop," Peggy huffs, sitting up to extricate herself from her knickers. Angie does the honors on the stocking clips, but she has to stand to rid herself of her girdle.

"Those girls in their shift dresses have the right idea," she grumbles, climbing back onto the bed.

"Not for you with those hips, honey." Angie takes her hand, guiding Peggy back over her, hands settling on the anatomy in question. "These don't deserve to be hidden away."

Peggy presses a small kiss to Angie's chin. "You're very kind."

"And you are too far away," Angie replies, knocking her knee against Peggy's to send her hips crashing into Angie below her. "Much better."

It is the closest they have ever been, and Peggy agrees; it _is_ much better.

Then Angie arches up to kiss her, and Peggy forgets she's the one keeping the rest of her suspended above Angie, sinking down against her in a warm press from breasts to hips with nothing between them. She can feel the beat of Angie's pulse against her own ribs.

"This is nice," she says between kisses, and Angie nods at this monstrous understatement, giving Peggy a look of such utter contentment that Peggy knows she understood what Peggy really meant.

They kiss again, no real back and forth this time, just their mouths joined softly in a surprisingly chaste moment between everything that has already happened and what Peggy is certain will follow.

Angie rolls them over without breaking their kiss, and Peggy takes the opportunity to run her hand down the length of her back, tracing the lines of muscles as Angie shifts. She can feel Angie touching her, both in action and consequence, and it sends a shudder through her, makes her fingers curl into the flesh beneath them, the arousal that had built in the living room returning in spades.

"Angie," Peggy groans when Angie moves away, dragging her mouth down Peggy's neck. But she doesn't stop there, and she continues down Peggy's chest to suck at her breast, palming the other none too gently.

She pulls Angie closer, shifting beneath her until she's between Angie's legs with her own and Angie's between hers, and when she raises her knee and rolls her hips Angie lets out a quiet _"fuck._ "

Angie moves against her, shifting her legs and tucking her arms under Peggy's until there is nowhere else left for them to be touching. "Does this work for you?" she asks between a series of kisses across Peggy's jaw. "Cause this really works for me."

Peggy's answering chuckle devolves into a moan and Angie takes it as her queue to move in earnest, tilting her hips to drag her leg against where Peggy is soaking wet.

The feel of Angie everywhere, all at once, sends the thread of arousal spreading through her, from the top of her spine to the curl of her toes, and she watches a flush of heat travel across Angie's skin as she quickly catches up as Peggy moves against her in counterpoint.

They don't chase after a rhythm so much as one rises up between them, grabs hold of them and demands they succumb to the inevitable. As she gets closer, she's no longer in control of the rise and fall of her body, and she can't stop the sounds being wrung from her as Angie shifts against her with deliberation.

When she comes, it's with a cry so loud she'll be embarrassed by it later, but it feels like the absolute least she could do to express how utterly helpless she is in that moment.

As she's coming down, she realises Angie's still moving against her, and she turns her head to where Angie has buried it against Peggy's neck, kissing her softly. "Darling," she says, and it seems that is all Angie needs to let herself go as well.

When it's over, they are a sweating pile of limbs.

After a moment of silence, Angie says, "Well that wasn't half bad," and Peggy laughs so hard there are tears in her eyes.

* * *

The sun is nothing but a faint suggestion on the horizon when Peggy wakes.

She gives herself a moment to enjoy the way Angie has remained wrapped around her as they slept, nose tucked up against her shoulder. Her breathing is slow and even and the only sound in the otherwise quiet hotel room, and Peggy watches the rise and fall of her back, the tiny puffs of air disturbing the fall of Peggy's hair.

Angie is an insignificant weight against Peggy's body, yet moving from beneath her is an effort Peggy can barely comprehend. Angie doesn't protest though, and when Peggy tucks the bedding around her she makes a contented sound that has Peggy biting her lip.

She finds her dress in the dimness of the living room, wrinkled beyond decency, her shoes and bag by the door. She gathers them up, along with Angie's things which she sets on the arm of the sofa that they had made use of the night before. Her underwear she retrieves as she she passes back through the bedroom to close herself away in the bathroom, diverting her gaze away from the soundly sleeping woman in the bed.

She dresses as quickly as she can,  scrubs her face clean with a damp hand towel, and carries her shoes back out to the living room.

There is a stack of paper in a side table, and Peggy takes a sheet, flipping the _Plaza Hotel_ letterhead to the back. She uses a pen from her handbag. She doesn't explain herself very well, in her chicken scratch handwriting, but it's more effort at saying good bye than anyone in her life would expect her to make.

It's more effort than she would expect herself to make. For Angie, it’s the least she can do.

When she is done, she is more exhausted than when she started, and her day hasn't even begun. She slips her shoes on, which still pinch, then gathers her bag and hopes she can retrieve her coat from where she deposited it at the start of the evening.

Angie stirs as she's placing her note on the nightstand. "You're going?" she asks around a yawn, stretching beneath the sheets in a way that looks truly pleasurable.

"I—" She had hoped to avoid this. "Yes."

"'kay," Angie says, snuggling down in the sheets. "You gotta go to work I suppose. I'll see you later? How do you feel about coffee?"

The question baffles her, and Peggy is not an easily baffled person, but the idea that Angie would want to continue whatever this is, beyond this single encounter, simply never occurred to her. Now that she thinks on it, she's not certain why she had decided that this would play itself out so quickly, only that she'd no reason to believe it wouldn't, whether she wanted it to or… not.

"What am I saying?" Angie continues, seemingly oblivious to Peggy's internal tempest. "I know you like coffee."

"I do," she says, taking a seat on the bed. Angie blinks up at her sleepily, and Peggy can't help but reach out, touching Angie's cheek before leaning in to press a kiss to her lips. She hadn't thought she would get to do that again. "I do like coffee," she says faintly when they part.

Angie tugs at a lock of Peggy's hair impishly. "I know that, English."

"But I do have to go to work." Now that it's been mentioned, she can already feel herself drifting into thoughts of work, but she's holding them at bay to give Angie her attention.

"Still not telling me anything I don't already know."

"Alright, cheeky." She kisses Angie again, quick and smacking, and then stands, taking in the sight before her.

"Reggio on Macdougal Street. You're not too fancy for the West Village these days are you?"

"Not for you, darling." She kisses Angie one more time, lingering just because she can. "I'll see you later."

* * *

The apartment door clicks shut under Peggy's weight as she slumps back against it.

Standing in her rumpled dress and pinching shoes, the chill in the air creeping beneath her coat, she closes her eyes against this place she has called home for several years now.

She pushes away from the door with a groan, not bothering to lock it or even turn on a light. She won't be here long, just enough to shower and change. In the bedroom, her bed is made and she wonders when it was that she last slept in it. Not that it matters.

Stripping herself of her clothes, she sags onto the bed to remove her stockings, burying her face in her hands rather than bothering to sit up once she's done.

Between her fingers there is a line of framed photos, faces staring out at her from the nightstand. The easiest to look at is the old photo of Steve she's carried around for what seems like forever. It's a part of her that's so well worn it has become a comfort just to know it's there.

It's something to look at that isn't the other two photos, which is why she makes herself look now.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

_September 1950 -- Inchon, Korea_

 

“Stop!” Peggy shouts, and the gun in her hand, glinting in the flood lights from the compound to their north, certainly implies what will happen if the operative running at her doesn’t do as he’s told.

He doesn’t.

There isn't supposed to be any men this far out from their target. She thought they had been clear, and now she has to deal with this and yell at somebody for their shoddy work once they return home. And she'd been so proud of managing not to kill anybody on this mission.

The sound of gunfire as she empties half her clip gives another operative his chance, leaping at her from behind and sending them both into the soggy earth of the Korean wilderness. As she wrestles herself free, gets an arm between herself and the sweaty German laying into her side with his fist, she gives into her frustration and punches him in the side of the face. "I shouldn’t even be here!"

She _should_ be at home. She's a mother now; mothers _should_ be at home with their children.

Bloody hell, she _wanted_ to be home with her children.

Technically she's on leave from SHIELD, and they had all agreed that she would take her time returning. When she learnt that the sight of a heavily pregnant woman sitting in the Director's chair made some agents nervous -- Howard finding it tiresomely amusing as he relayed the story -- she'd decided right then to stay until her water broke right there on the office floor, just to make a point. But her doctor had other ideas; between twins and her age, it was for the best, and she didn’t even think to fight him on bed rest.

But in truth, she was back before she ever really left. The reports coming out of North Korea of human experimentation had her pouring over every bit of data from her rest bed, and as they became more gruesome—and more familiar—she'd become frantic to do something useful. What kind of parent would she be to bring children into the world knowing these things were going on and doing nothing about it.

Now, Richard and Elizabeth are six weeks old, tiny and helpless and entirely dependent on their parents for everything, and here she is rolling around in the dirt halfway around the world from them. She directs another blow at the operative’s face just for that.

A week ago, SHIELD received word that their chance to get in and see things for themselves was close, but the information was sketchy. There were too many variables to assess, and too little time to do it any way other than in the field. Peggy had to go.

The punch angers the operative and in his rage he manages to topple Peggy over, giving him enough room that a furious swipe sees his knife ripping through her pants and into her flesh. It also gives Peggy enough room to aim her gun, and the operative is dead before he can pull his blade free.

“Hey, Peg, you— Oh.” Dum Dum comes to a stop at the sight of the two dead operatives and and the knife in Peggy's leg. “Dunno why I was worried.”

“Because the last time you were in a knife fight,” she says, pushing the dead body away with her good leg, “you lost your moustache?”

“I thought we promised to never bring that up?” Dum Dum drops to the ground beside her, then takes hold of her ankle before pulling the knife out.

“Ow,” she enunciates, for show more than any further pain he’s causing. It hurts, but she’s had worse. The bleeding isn't too bad, so she'll probably be fine.

“Ya big baby,” he says, tearing a strip off the dead guy’s shirt and wrapping it around Peggy’s thigh. “Speaking of, how are the little rug rats?”

At the mention of them, the aches across her body seem to grow, and she leans back against her pack. “They’re perfect,” she sighs, as if ‘perfect’ covered the vastness of her feelings, and tries not to be annoyed at the situation now that it's over. Their mission, assuming they don't die between here and the airstrip, has been successful, and it's time to go home.

It’s dark as they take off, and it’s dark when they land, having chased the sun across the Atlantic but never quite catching it. It’s darker still when she arrives home, thanking the junior agent at the wheel before she offers to assist Peggy any further.

Standing in the elevator feels like more effort than she can manage, but the doorman's eyes had widened at the sight of her already and if she stays in the car until it returns to the first floor he might do something ridiculous like call an ambulance.

Peggy tries not to make any noise as she makes her way through the apartment. She touches the nursery door as she passes, but the movement seems to be one too many, and she has to take a moment before continuing down the hall.

The bathroom light hurts her eyes, but there’s necessity in her actions now as she pushes the door closed.

She strips off her jacket, and only then catches the wet smell of milk soaking through the rest of her layers. Pulling off her shirt reveals a spray of bruises across her torso, which is far more worrying. It’s been a long time since she’s been this badly injured, even with the time out of the field while she was pregnant.

Pulling the field bandage from her leg, necessity becomes urgency, too. The wound is much deeper than she originally thought, and throbbing with the angry tinge of an oncoming infection. Faintly, she recognises that it’s also incredibly close to the femoral artery, so close she should rightly have bled all over that forest floor and never got up again.

By the time Peggy’s torn the leg of her pants clear, there’s a river of blood tracking down her leg, pooling where her sock is bunched until it spills over and onto the tile.

She should have taken her boots off before she started. She should have only shot once. She should have known there were enough operatives at the compound to have people stationed as sentries.

There’s little time for any beauty in her work; her hand’s already beginning to tremble as she pours antiseptic over the wound. If she calls out, or calls for help she’ll wake the children.

The needle is still hanging from the last thread through her skin when the trembling in her hand settles into the rest of her, shaking loose the utter terror that had risen in the blood trying to leave her body, now escaping her in heaving sobs that she cannot swallow.

She allows it for a moment, and then makes herself stop. A shower washes away a good part of the damage, physically at least, and she pauses at the nursery on her way to the bedroom, this time stopping to look in on the children asleep in their cribs.

Elizabeth is small and fussy, with dark hair and eyes, and Peggy can see her arms held in tight to her body beneath her blanket. Peggy has yet to work out what settles her into sleep, and she's beginning to suspect it's nothing but the child's own force of will.

In the other crib, Richard has kicked all his blankets loose. Peggy tucks them back in around him, and he practically coos under her touch.

She shouldn’t have been so unprepared, so eager to fling herself into the field with her head only half-way in the game.  She's always had an abstract mission in life, but now it's become frighteningly clear. It’s too important that things not get mucked up.

She won't make the same mistake again.

 

* * *

* * *

 

Peggy has to squint through the glare of early afternoon sunlight to see the faces of people passing by. Her thumb worries the scar on her thigh, just a small ridge through her nylon stockings. It doesn’t ache. It never aches. Not since it healed sixteen years ago. But sometimes there’s the ghost of an ache there, settled right beside the bone like a stone in a riverbed. In particularly long meetings and on taxing days, Peggy will let her thumb rub at that scar, the motion a tic.

Today she sits nestled in the warmth of the cafe Angie had suggested, beside a window, waiting. She arrived late, even though she left work early to do so.

She watches everyone walking through the cool autumnal streets outside less out of habit and more out of anticipation. Her stomach churns, and she clutches the glass of water on the table in front of her like a lifeline. She takes a sip, sets the drink back down, her fingertips slipping against the glass and coming to rest atop the table. When a figure steps close to her table, she has to blink furiously through the sun in her eyes to see who it is.

Angie looks painfully radiant as she reaches up to remove her sunglasses, like she’s made of polished bronze. The edges of her fade into the sunlight until the boundaries between the two are indiscernible. “Well, you’re here early!”

It takes a moment for Peggy to answer. By the time she does, Angie has shrugged off her coat and is already scooting her chair closer so that she’s joined Peggy at the table, just out of reach of the sun’s rays glancing through the tall windows beside them. Somehow Angie seems to bring a little sunlight with her; the fresh warm scent of it sticks to her skin and clothes like a burr. “Actually I was late, which makes you later even than me. I’ll have you know that’s an impressive feat.”

“Oh, how the times have changed!” Angie says in a teasing voice, shooting Peggy an impish look.

Peggy lifts her chin. “I wasn’t _always_ late!” But when Angie snorts lightly, she grudgingly admits, “Just most of the time.”

Angie places her sunglasses on the table, and nudges Peggy’s glass. “Have you already ordered?”

The motion brings their fingers into brief contact, faint enough that Peggy is left wondering if she imagined the whole thing. Still her lips part, and when she answers she sounds a little windswept even to her own ears. “I was waiting for you.”

She realises after she’s said it that it applies to more than just today. Clearing her throat, Peggy tries to tear her eyes away from Angie, but they keep wandering back of their own volition. Angie’s smiling, all soft and full and beaming, and then she’s raising her hand to hail a passing waiter. If he recognises her he doesn’t give any indication of it. He just nods when she tells him her order in cool, precise words, an espresso macchiato with real milk only, and then they’re both looking expectantly in Peggy’s direction, and she realises she’s been staring.

“Just...” She shifts in her chair and crosses her arms so that she isn’t within Angie’s easy touching-distance. “A cappuccino for me, please.”

The waiter gives a smart nod, then vanishes into the back, leaving them all alone. Peggy has faced down all manner of thugs and assassins, but looking at Angie now she has to clench her hands, nails digging into her palms to keep herself grounded. The woman across from her is somehow less and more than the Angie she knows. And suddenly Peggy understands that this is Angela, the actress. Refined, elegant Angela.

Angie is still outlined with light so that it traces her form, and when she leans back in the seat, her hair catches the sun and gleams copper-bright. “To be honest I was half afraid you would choose not to show. Especially with that letter of yours.”

Peggy’s blood runs cold. She’d completely forgotten about that: the sum of everything she felt about that night, right there on the page, falling completely short of doing them justice. What Angie must think of her sitting here. Clearing her throat she asks, “And are you glad I did?”

"Are _you_ glad you did?" Angie shoots back, and the person ordering that coffee is back before Angie can blink her away.

"I am," Peggy breathes. "Angie, I—" And here Peggy pauses. Regret is something she’s far too intimately familiar with in her life, but she’s always loath to voice it aloud. As though speech made it more real. “I wish we’d stayed in touch. I had every opportunity to do so, and yet I never did.”

Angie smiles, herself again, and it’s a bit sad. “Yeah. Me too. But I bet you know how it is: pursuing a career over pretty much everything else.”

Peggy lets slip a bitter laugh. In anyone else’s presence she would have tensed, defensive, but she looks at Angie’s understanding gaze, and knows that she’s not alone in making choices that didn’t always turn out for the best. Peggy doesn’t even need to reply. She is sure the famous silver-screen actress, Angela Martin, understands all too well how tired one gets of apologising for making their own choices.

Their drinks arrive. Peggy murmurs her thanks to the waiter, and Angie rewards him with a smile as luminous as the sky through the window beside her. Peggy watches her balance the tiny espresso cup between her fingers, and wonders exactly when Angie gave up her taste for sweet things in lieu of sophisticated airs. She suspects it was right around the time she stepped off the plane in California.

“I must confess I’ve never seen any of your films,” Peggy says over the rim of her cappuccino.

Angie’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “And here I was hoping you’ve been pining after me in my movies.”

Her tone is lithe and teasing, but the heated look she aims across the table hits Peggy like a physical blow to the gut. Peggy almost chokes on her coffee.

Delicately putting her cup down, Peggy clears her throat and admits, “Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I completely ignored your career.”

That is an understatement. In fact Peggy has followed Angie’s career quite closely. Throughout the years she told herself over and over again that keeping tabs on people who knew the truth about her job was simply good practice. Sensible even. All the while she ignored the sweltry whisper in her ear, belying the vestiges of an old flame.

Though calling it ‘an old flame’ was taking what they had back in the day a little too far. Living with someone and dodging their mutual attraction for three years could hardly be considered ‘an old flame.’ Peggy just didn’t have any other words that could better describe it.

“I’d like to say the same, but -” Angie trails off and waves her hand in Peggy’s direction

Peggy gives a rueful grin. “I’d be impressed if you’d managed to.”

Jabbing a finger at her, Angie says with faux severity, “Hey, you don't know who could have recruited me out in Hollywood.”

"Really." Peggy chuckles at the idea.

"I'll have you know the House Un-American Activities Committee investigated me and everything."

A laugh bubbles up in Peggy’s chest, catching on the roof of her mouth in a low hum. She smiles and Angie smiles back, and for a fleeting moment in time the rest of the world evaporates. Suddenly they’re sitting in a cafe, and it’s as if no time has passed at all. “I’ve missed this.”

“Good. Else this would be incredibly awkward. I’d hate for you to grow tired of me,” Angie says, then sips at her espresso primly.

Peggy snorts at having her own words from twenty years ago thrown back in her face. “Lord, we were hopeless back then.”

“Still are, if you ask me.” Finishing her coffee, Angie places the small cup back on its matching saucer, and when she looks up at Peggy her eyes are frank, “Did you want to, back then?”

She doesn’t need to elaborate. The previous night still burns in the fore of Peggy’s mind, vivid and scalding as an ember.

"Yes." Peggy answers too fast, but God, she did.

"Peg," Angie says with a suddenly serious lilt. "The things you wrote."

"Oh, God," Peggy groans, horribly embarrassed. Trying to remember _exactly_ what she said, but only able to fixate on the fact that she’d revealed far too much. "I shouldn't have—"

"Me too," Angie says, cutting Peggy off in that straight forward way that has carried them so far already. "I feel the same way."

And Peggy believes her.

Beneath the table Angie crosses her legs at the knee and ‘accidentally’ brushes her foot across Peggy’s calf. “Do you want to again?”

Once more she is sly and polished Angela, flirting with a practiced ease, but Angie lurks somewhere beneath the façade. It’s that hint of the old Angie, who smuggles pastries and syrupy schnapps and traitorous secret agents into the Griffith, that has Peggy draining her too-hot cappuccino in one long draught.

Up in Angie’s hotel room though, that glossy veneer melts away, and Angie’s lithe and warm and real beneath Peggy’s hands. Her breath is hot and damp against Peggy’s bare shoulder as she tugs down the zipper of Peggy’s skirt. When Peggy presses her against the closed door and rolls their hips together, she mewls, a high throaty sound that has Peggy grasping at her waist and breathing raggedly.

* * *

Afterwards, Angie nuzzles into the soft skin of Peggy’s neck, while Peggy’s fingers comb through her hair. They’d managed to make it to the bed at some point, and the sheets are mussed beneath them, most of their clothes scattered near the door in the other room. Vaguely Peggy notices that her blouse is draped over a nearby chest of drawers. It will be a mission to find the rest of her garments.

Angie’s thumb strokes over that scar on Peggy’s thigh, and her satisfied sigh tickles at Peggy’s collarbone. “Are you free tomorrow evening?”

Peggy’s instinctive reaction is to immediately reply ‘yes’ until she remembers. She has plans tomorrow evening. Plans she can’t cancel. Not again.

Her fingernails pause against Angie’s scalp, before resuming their carding once more. Hesitant, Peggy replies, “I’d love to, but unfortunately I have a meeting tomorrow evening.”

Still Angie’s thumb strokes that scar, which she’d found earlier on her wanders southward and lavished with attention. The recent memory makes Peggy shiver. “Do you take all your meetings at night?” Angie asks playfully. “Or just the really important ones?”

That bone-deep ache has returned in her thigh, and Peggy feels a sinking sensation swoop low in her stomach. She has to fight to keep her hand from clamping into a fist in Angie’s hair. Instead she presses a kiss to the top of Angie’s eyebrow and says, “Only the really important ones.”

* * *

Peggy carries that dead weight in her stomach all through the next day and into the evening, until she's standing before a door outside a house that looks exactly the same as every other house on the suburban block. Above her the light is broken, so she stands in the dark, illuminated only by the feeble glow from the curtained windows bracketing the entryway. The cold seeps into her, creeping as a tide, and she thumbs at the upturned lapels of her coat, her hands sheathed in pale doeskin gloves. She tugs the gloves down her fingers and tucks them into her pocket before knocking on the door.

She’s forgotten the wine, but at this point she’s grown so used to being a disappointing guest that she can hardly bring herself to care.

There’s a shuffling of socks on the other side of the door, and it opens to reveal Daniel. His tie has been removed and the first button of his shirt undone, but he still wears a signature patterned sweater-vest. “You made it.” He doesn’t sound surprised, only appeased.

“For once,” Peggy jokes weakly.

He steps back to let her inside, shutting the door behind her. In the foyer she toes off her shoes, nudging them with the side of her foot into line with the rest of the column of shoes arrayed beneath the coat-rack like soldiers on parade. Daniel doesn’t offer to take her coat, and instead scrubs a hand through the grey-streaked hair at his temples. Not that she expected him to. It would have been more awkward had he done so, even out of good manners. Especially since it’s at that exact moment his wife decides to walk in from the kitchen.

“Margaret, you made it!” Helen greets, and she does sound surprised, the expression exaggerated even.

Peggy shrugs out of her coat and props its collar against a hook. As she does so she congratulates herself on not clenching her teeth; very few people can get away with calling her ‘Margaret’ and Helen is one of them. “I’m afraid I forgot the wine.”

Helen reaches around her back to untie the spotless apron over her dress, and manages to lift it over her head without sending a single strand of blonde hair out of place. “Not to worry! I bought a bottle just in case.”

Of course she did.

“Make yourself at home,” she says, and she folds the apron neatly between her hands. “Dinner should be ready soon.”

Peggy doesn’t thank her, only manages a smile more akin to a grimace than anything else. No more than thirty seconds through the door, and already she’s been reminded that this used to be her home, but isn’t any longer. Hasn’t been for a number of years, in fact. It certainly doesn’t help that everything looks different, even the paint. Nevertheless the house is suffused with a sense of acquaintance, like shaking the hand of an old friend. Peggy could open a drawer at random and instinctually know exactly what she’d find inside.

Helen disappears back into kitchen, and Peggy turns to Daniel. “Where are they?” she asks.

In answer he points towards the living room.

Peggy’s stockinged feet whisper across the carpet. When she rounds the corner she’s met with floral printed couches and wood-panelled walls, everything pristine and vaguely familiar, as though she had already seen everything in a catalogue. The kids are on one of the couches, Elizabeth reading a book -- The Valley of the Dolls -- with one foot stretched out onto the coffee table, Richard scratching away at a notebook with a pencil.

Smiling, Peggy crosses the space between them. They don’t stand up to return her hug, but at least they put their activities down as she bends over to envelop each in turn. Richard even places his forearm at her flank in the semblance of an embrace, while Elizabeth slopes her shoulders together so that they brush against Peggy’s own. Then Peggy straightens and steps back to get a better look at them.

They are sixteen and choleric and abrasive, and Peggy can’t remember any two people being more perfect.

Elizabeth has her dark hair bobbed like one of those waifish girls from a Godard film, and she’s pretty enough to scare Peggy a little bit. On the other hand Richard is all angles, elbows and knees and wrists jabbing out in every direction. His face lacks the squareness of jaw that will come with age, and his eyes are as large and dark as his sister’s. They pick up their things again, Elizabeth’s foot propping itself back atop the coffee table, and only half pay attention to the fact that Peggy is there at all.

Peggy takes that as her cue to sit in a vacant chair nearby. She smooths her skirt over her knees and asks, “How are things?”

Richard’s pencil keeps moving, but he glances up over the top of his notebook at her. “Things are good.”

“Anything exciting happen since I last saw you?” Peggy presses. She can't remember precisely when that was. At least an inch in Richard's height by the looks of it.

She tries telling herself that boys his age always grow so fast.

He shrugs, returning to his writing. His legs curl up beneath him so that he’s perched like a cat on the end of the couch. “No. Not really.”

It’s a stark contrast to the easy almost seamless way Elizabeth sprawls. Peggy’s eyes dart between them, grasping at something to say, anything to say that might entice them into conversation. Just as she’s about to open her mouth however, Helen breezes into the room. Immediately Elizabeth’s foot shoots off the table before Helen can see it there.

“Dinner’s ready!” Helen announces too cheerily, gesturing for them to all follow her into the dining room.

Daniel, who had been hovering in the doorway, is first away, while Peggy waits until the twins pass until she trails after them. The dining table is spread with a rich cream-coloured tablecloth and matching china rimmed with gold. The lights have been dimmed so that the only real source of lighting comes from the tall pale candles, pin pricked with flame. Everyone falls into their usual seating arrangements -- Daniel and Helen on one side of the table, with Elizabeth and Richard on the other -- leaving Peggy to lower herself into a seat at the head of the table.

Helen has cooked a glorious glazed ham, as though to remind Peggy that her visit is an event, an occasion -- like Christmas. If Christmas involved long floundering pauses and avoiding of gazes, that is. So, exactly like the Christmases Peggy remembers. The ones she was able to attend anyway.

They all reach out for various platters of food, passing around dishes upon request until every plate is full. Peggy drapes a serviette across her lap, and carefully waits until she spies the others eating before starting on her own meal.

Seeing Helen eat is like bird-watching. She bites off tiny morsels from her fork, chewing as though each mouthful is a little delicacy. It serves to remind Peggy that Daniel really did chose to remarry someone exactly the opposite of her. The perfect housewife who chews daintily, and who is a wizard in the kitchen, and who never forgets birthdays or anniversaries, and who doesn’t show up in the dead of night with bloodied knuckles and limp curls and splotchy bruises ringing her eyes.

Swallowing a large mouthful of ham and green beans, Peggy breaches the silence that has descended across the table. “How’s field hockey, Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth rolls her eyes. “The season is over. I’m doing theatre now.”

“Right. Of course.” Peggy shoves a bit of roast potato into her mouth to stop herself from saying she’s sorry. She feels like every second word out of her mouth this evening should be an apology, and frankly she’s tired of it already.

“Lizzie is going to go see a show on Broadway with some of her friends,” Daniel informs her, and Peggy hums around the bit of potato.

At that Elizabeth’s whole face lights up, “Yes! _Breakfast at Tiffany’s_ is being performed with Angela Martin!”

Peggy, who had been sipping at her glass of red wine, chokes. Everyone turns to stare. Eyes watering, Peggy coughs into her hand.

She hadn’t even bothered to ask exactly why Angie was in town. She should have known it was for business of some sorts. _Capote's good side._ God, how could she have been so thick?

“That’s right.” Daniel gestures with his fork, brows furrowed in thought. “You used to know her, didn’t you, Peggy?”

Elizabeth’s cutlery clatters against her plate, and she sits straight up as though she’s been stung by a hornet. She gapes at her mother, eyes wide, “You -- _what?”_

Peggy wishes she could sink right through the floor and into the infinite void of space. Clearing her throat, she confesses, “We were flatmates for a few years back in ‘46.”

“For a few _years?”_ Elizabeth parrots incredulously. Then she leans forward, and for once Peggy has her full and undivided attention. Her eyes catch the candlelight and flicker, amber and eager. “Were you friends? Do you still talk to each other? Do you think you could arrange for us to meet her?”  

For a few moments Peggy’s mouth works like a fish gasping for breath on a sun-bathed dock. Glancing around she realises even Richard is watching her with rapt attention, waiting for her answers. “I—” Peggy falters. “Well, I suppose you could call us friends. Though I didn’t keep in touch with her after we parted ways.”

All true. Technically. Not that it stops her stomach from trying to wrap itself into knots.

“The kids have been excited about it for weeks. Haven’t you?” Daniel pipes up, trying to fill the lulls in conversation where he sees Peggy flagging.

“Yeah, even Richard bought tickets.” Elizabeth smirks at her brother, and nudges his elbow with her own so that his arm slips off the table.

The tips of Richard’s ears go bright red. He shoots Elizabeth a dirty look and mumbles, “Shut up, Lizzie.”

Inwardly Peggy groans. Oh, lord. Her son has a schoolboy crush on the woman she’s sleeping with on the sly. This night could not get any worse.

“So, what did she used to be like?” The brunt of Elizabeth’s attention is aimed at Peggy, and once again Peggy finds herself scrambling for answers that won’t be too revealing. Now that she has her daughter’s attention, she doesn’t have a clue what to do with it.

“Excitable,” she finally says. “Kind. Extraordinarily loyal. And stubborn.” She adds the last in a mutter, shaking her head and allowing herself a small smile at the memories. “Very stubborn. It’s probably how she managed to make it so far in life: sheer force of will.”

Suddenly Peggy feels that she’s given away too much. They’re all looking at her, and she’s smiling and thinking about _Angie_ , and the irrational fear worms its way to the fore of her mind that they know. They couldn’t possibly know, but somehow she’s sure that’s astonishment tinging their expressions, as though it’s the first time they’re really seeing her relax when she talks. And perhaps it is.

She clamps her mouth shut and answers the remainder of Elizabeth and Richard’s questions with short, deliberate answers. They can’t know about Angie. She’s not ready for them to know about Angie. Not yet.

Of course eventually her children lose interest and resign themselves to their meals. In an attempt to salvage the conversation, Daniel announces, “Richard’s having a short story published in the school newspaper.”

Peggy expresses the appropriate level of pride and admiration, and she really does mean it genuinely. She just can’t tell if they believe her.

The quiet returns, and Peggy says, “Dinner is delicious, Helen.”

Everyone chimes in honestly, agreeing with gusto. It’s the most popular sentence Peggy says all night.

Mercifully dinner ends rather quickly as far as family dinners are concerned. Peggy is used to packing away food at an alarming rate whenever she can, like an animal that doesn’t know when it will have the opportunity for the next meal. Helen stands to take away everyone’s plates, and Peggy rises as well to help cart everything back into the kitchen. Before she can be shooed away back into polite company, Peggy turns the tap and plugs the sink, filling it with water.

“You don’t have to do that,” Helen tells her, as she starts spooning leftovers into spare dishes and covering them with cellophane for packing into the refrigerator.

“I prefer feeling useful,” Peggy admits, pouring a healthy dose of dishwashing liquid into the sink, where it bubbles and foams.

Helen hands her a pair of pink rubber gloves, but Peggy's already rolled her sleeves up and she's up to her elbows in tepid soapy water, pulling the nearest plate towards her. Stretching the pink elastic between her hands, Helen says, “I’m so glad you could take the time out of your busy schedule at the Agency to come visit us.”

Peggy’s hands don’t slow, and she continues scrubbing away at the dish until it’s clean, then props it atop a rack beside her and reaches for another. “I’m always happy to see the kids.”

Only Daniel knows about her roles in the SSR and now in SHIELD. Helen and the kids think she leads some tame government organisation that they obliquely refer to as ‘the Agency.’ To be perfectly honest Peggy prefers it this way. She never wanted her kids to be entangled in her job. She knew from experience that it could never end well. The fewer people who knew about her position as Director of SHIELD, the better.

Since Peggy has taken the place at the sink, Helen flounders for something to do. Eventually she picks up a tea towel and begins drying dishes. It’s like a dance, the way they avoid each other in the kitchen. They skirt around safe topics, the banality of which makes Peggy’s teeth ache.

“It’s growing frightfully cold in the evenings, isn’t it?” Helen tries to make it sound congenial, but Peggy can see that even she -- the perfect hostess and housewife -- is struggling for topics of discussion. They have absolutely nothing in common. Except the kids and Daniel. And Peggy would rather have bamboo splintered up her fingernails than talk about her ruined marriage with the woman who picked up the pieces in her wake.

Peggy gives a noncommittal hum of agreement, then says, “The porch light is broken.”

“Yes. I know.” Helen runs the towel over a dish and lifts up on her toes to hide it away in a cupboard. It isn’t the cupboard Peggy would have chosen, and she’s left wondering how many other things have changed in the house beneath the surface. “I’ve been meaning to buy a new bulb. Do you think -?”

Behind them Elizabeth appears in the doorway, holding a school workbook. A pencil is tucked behind her ear. “Hey, mom?”

Both women turn.

Elizabeth freezes. Her eyes move guiltily from one to the other, before settling -- not on Peggy -- but on Helen. “I had a question about my French homework,” she holds up the booklet.

Of course. Daniel had mentioned something awhile back about how Helen had lived in Paris for a year or two in the early ‘50s.

Painstakingly avoiding Peggy’s gaze, Helen puts down the tea towel and ushers Elizabeth into the sitting room. For a moment Peggy just stands there, hands dripping with cold sudsy water in the dim, blue-painted kitchen. Then she turns back around and slowly begins finishing up the dishes. Her fingers grow numb from clenching the sponge so hard.

“Everything alright in here?”

Peggy doesn’t turn at the sound of Daniel’s voice from the doorway. Instead she keeps facing resolutely forward, the line of her back and shoulders tense. “Everything’s fine,” she says, willing the hoarseness from her voice.

She places another dish atop the rack, and continues washing up the mess.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

_February 1956 -- Westchester County, New York_

 

She barely has enough time to change into a new shirt, one that isn’t ripped and bloodied. There is absolutely nothing to be done about her skirt, however. Luckily the material is dark enough to hide the most obvious stains. She stuffs the ruined blouse under the passenger seat, and steps from her car.

Spots of old rain still clinging to the vehicle shake free when she slams the door behind her. Her breath mists in the chilly, damp, evening air, but she’s left her coat behind in the violent scuffle with the now very dead HYDRA agent, and hasn’t bothered to grab another from work. She’s already late enough as it is.

Her steps clack as she rushes in a limping half-jog towards the school auditorium. People are already streaming from the entrance, parents ushering their children towards their waiting cars. Swearing under her breath, Peggy cranes her neck over the sea of people. A passing mother shoots her an ugly look at the foul language, but Peggy ignores her.

As she rubs her shivering hands together she sees them in the adjacent parking lot; Daniel is tucking the kids into the car. More appropriately she spots Elizabeth’s ridiculous sunflower costume bobbing bright yellow and orange across the stretch of dull, rain-slicked pavement.

Weaving and pushing her way through the crowd, Peggy hurries over to them. “Sorry! Sorry! I’m here!”

At her arrival Elizabeth laces her arms across her chest, and is puffing out her red cheeks in disappointment. Peggy tries swooping down to press a kiss to one of those cheeks, but Elizabeth jerks away with a bitter whine like a kicked dog. In the other seat Richard doesn’t even seem surprised to see her arriving late.

Somewhat fuddled, Peggy straightens and clears her throat. She turns to Daniel. “How was it?”

He offers a smile. “Cute.”

“Unbearably so, I imagine.” Peggy’s expression turns hopeful. “Pictures?”

Daniel taps the bulky Canon VT camera hanging around his neck by a leather strap. “Heaps.”

“Oh, bless you.” She leans in and is grateful that he accepts the kiss to his cheek, chaste as it is. They almost always are these days.

Pulling away, Daniel points with his thumb to the car. “I’ll take them back. See you at home?”

She nods. “I’ll be right behind you.”

In fact she arrives just before them in her own car, and goes over to help take in the kids’ school bags, while Daniel carries a dozing Richard into the house, Elizabeth close at sleep’s door as well. The last inside, Peggy locks the front door, and walks to the living room. Daniel sets Richard down and rouses him for the walk up the stairs to their bedrooms. What with his leg, Daniel can only cart them around so far. On the other hand Elizabeth is already whining and stomping up the stairs, insisting that she is not, in fact, tired.

Dropping their school bags onto the couch, Peggy makes to follow, but one of the bags tips over, spilling its contents across the floor. Peggy kneels down to stuff everything back inside. When she comes across a particular sheet of paper however, she pauses.

At the top of the worksheet it asks: ‘What do you want for Christmas? Make a list!’ Below, at the very top of a short list of toys and other items, in Richard’s uneven scrawl is his answer: ‘I want my Mom home.’

The page crumples in Peggy’s fist before she realises what she’s done, and she slowly unclenches her hand. Smoothing the paper out, she pushes it back into the bag, then goes upstairs.

Daniel is putting the kids to bed. Peggy hovers just outside the door, peering in to watch.

“She _never_ comes,” Elizabeth’s surly mutter floats across the dark room, lit only by a pale yellowish night-light on the far wall.

“She tries, honey.” Daniel smooths his hand over her brow. “Mommy’s very important, you know.”

Straightening her shoulders, Peggy gives a soft knock on the door and pushes her way inside. Richard is already fast asleep, curled beneath the sheets. Still, she kisses the top of his head peeking out atop the pillow, then moves to Elizabeth’s bed.

“Good night, darling,” Peggy murmurs, and at least Elizabeth allows the kiss this time. Churlish and sleepy and stubborn, but accepting all the same.

Peggy can’t really ask for much more.

 

* * *

* * *

 

After finishing the dishes Peggy doesn’t stay much longer at Daniel’s house. The thought of staying makes her feel vaguely sick. When she returns home from the family dinner, her apartment is cold and dark. She turns on all the lights but it's still not enough. Before she can stop herself, she's crossed the room and picked up the phone and dialled a number, and the tone is humming in her ear.

"Hello?"

The sound of Angie's voice steals Peggy's breath away, and for a moment she just stands there, hand hovering over the cradle, debating whether she should hang up and go to bed.

"Hello?" Angie repeats.

"Hi." The word escapes Peggy in a shaky sigh. "It's me."

She would have normally apologised for ringing so late, but she feels like she’s done enough apologising for one night.

“Peggy?” In the background she can hear the shuffle of pages and something softer, like bedsheets, “I thought you had a meeting of some sort?”

Peggy rubs at her eyes while she responds. “I did. It finished a little earlier than expected.”

“If this is what you call ‘early’ then I’d hate to see what your late meetings are like,” Angie jokes on the other end of the line. It’s only eight forty-five in the evening, but Peggy supposes that other people don’t normally pull all night shifts at work, resulting in them sleeping on a cot at work.

“Would you—” and here Peggy pulls the receiver away to steady herself with a deep breath before bringing the phone back to her ear. “Would you like to come over?”

“Sure! Why not?” There isn’t the slightest hint of hesitation, “You’re not interrupting much, trust me. Just catching up on a new script and some early shut-eye. The glamorous life of Angela Martin, ladies and gentlemen.”

Peggy can’t help herself -- she laughs. It’s only a short exhalation, but Angie has always been able to pull laughter out of her no matter the time or day.

She gives Angie her address, then hangs the phone back on its cradle. Glancing around her apartment, she supposes there’s no use in false pretenses -- they both know why Angie’s coming over -- and makes her way to the bedroom. By the time the knock on her door arrives twenty minutes later Peggy is dressed in a shimmering navy silk robe, and her hair falls loosely around her jawline, short enough to just sweep the tops of her shoulders.

She opens the door, and there Angie is, dressed in casual slacks and a hastily buttoned shirt beneath a sleek, heavy, camel-hair coat. She brandishes a bottle of bourbon as Peggy steps aside to let her in and close the door behind her. “You sounded like you needed this. Glasses?”

Peggy points to the kitchen. “Second cupboard on the left.”

Angie drops her coat across the couch in the living room on her way to the kitchen. From the other room Peggy can hear the distinctive grate of the wooden cupboards being opened. When Angie re-emerges holding two glasses, the bourbon tucked under one arm, she gives a theatrical shiver. “Brrr! You ever heard of heating, Peg? Or do you want to turn into a polar bear by assimilation?”

In answer Peggy takes the proffered drink and knocks it back in one swallow. She’s still lingering near the front door, unsure of how to act with someone else in her normally lonely apartment.

Setting the bottle down on the nearby coffee table, Angie moves closer. “What’s wrong?”

Those eyes are level and honest and concerned, and Peggy wraps one arm tight around her waist in the hopes it will ward off their scrutiny. “Nothing’s wrong.” She turns the glass so that a bead of liquor streaks along the bottom, and refuses to meeting Angie’s gaze. “Nothing new is wrong.”

Angie reaches out and grasps Peggy’s arm. The warmth of her hand stings through the thin silken robe. Peggy bites at her lower lip and straightens her spine, and has every intention of not looking at Angie, but then she does.

It’s the first time, she realises, she’s seen Angie not wearing make-up since their impromptu reunion. Before she was so thoroughly embellished with beauty products, Peggy could remember having the strange thought that she could strike her lightly on the cheek, and a fine cloud of powder would mist the air. Here and now however, she is refreshingly unadorned.

“You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to,” Angie murmurs, low and soothing. “But I’m willing to listen.”

For a moment Peggy stares, then she’s leaning forward and kissing her. The empty glass remains clutched in her hand. It isn’t a fervent kiss. It’s slow, languid, natural. It feels intimate yet utterly routine. The kind of kiss people share when they’ve known each other for years.

Finally Peggy pulls away and whispers, “Thank you.”

Angie has this enchanting little furrow between her eyebrows. “For what?”

They’re close enough that when Peggy tilts her head, her nose brushes over the bluff of Angie’s cheek. She wants to say: _For coming all the way out here in the night. For saying exactly what I needed to hear._ But instead she blinks back unshed tears and says, “For just...being you.”

Angie’s mouth curls into a smile. “Well, if I’d known it was that easy, I would’ve done this a long time ago.” She finishes by nipping at Peggy’s lower lip, playful yet gentle.

With a rueful shake of her head and a watery laugh, Peggy kisses her again. They don’t drink much bourbon after that.

* * *

The next morning Peggy wakes up late. It’s unlike her, and it feels indulgent in a way she hasn’t allowed herself in a long time. Angie is sprawled out on the bed beside her with most of the covers bunched around her waist. Peggy vaguely remembers waking up in the early hours of the morning to find that Angie had stolen all the covers, leaving her very naked body very much exposed to the chilly room, at which point they’d engaged in a grumbling sleepy tug-of-war before promptly falling back asleep.

For a moment Peggy lets herself watch Angie sleep before she swings her legs over the side of the bed and stands. She finds her robe puddled on the ground near the end of the bed, and drapes it over herself. Making her way to the kitchen, she brews herself a strong cup of tea, and heads back towards the bedroom holding the mug between her palms to absorb its heat. In the doorway of her bedroom, she pauses.

Tendrils of steam peel back from the mug in her hands. Angie is seated on the edge of the bed and the line of her back is gilded in early morning sunlight slanting through the windows. Her hair is a tousled mess, obscuring her downturned face. She’s looking at the pictures on Peggy’s bedside table, and in the doorway Peggy holds her breath.

There are very few photographs of Peggy with the kids. Just a small handful of faded monochromatic pictures. None recent. One looks staged, with the kids maybe 7 years old seated on either side of her on the couch. Beside that one is the old photo of Steve. The only truly candid photo is of Peggy still in the hospital bed holding the twins in her arms right after they were born, her smile soft yet exhausted, her hair messy and slicked to her brow. Angie seems fascinated by that photo. Her fingers trace its metallic frame.  

She drags her bottom lip between her teeth, “Are you...married?”

“Divorced,” Peggy answers. “For almost eight years now.”  

Angie lets out a breath Peggy didn't realise she'd been holding, sagging part way back into the mattress. “You look so happy here.” She looks over at Peggy now, who is frozen in the doorway, clutching a too-hot cup of tea, and looking like she could bolt at any second. “What the hell happened?”

Peggy exhales, and the steam swirls in billowy wisps. “Reality isn’t all sweetly cooing babies and pushing strollers in the park, Angie. I had a job to do.”

Angie doesn’t say anything. Like she's not surprised either that Peggy chose the job over the kids and family. Until finally she does speak. And it’s the very last thing Peggy expected.

“Must’ve been hard for you.”

Peggy tenses. The surface of the tea trembles and ripples in her grasp. Most people that knew an inkling about the sacrifices she made for her kids immediately thought the worst of her. This must have been the first time anyone actually --

Clearing her throat, Peggy looks anywhere but at Angie and takes a sip of tea. It scalds on the way down. “Aren’t you going to be mad at me for not telling you that I had kids?”

Angie cocks her head and a lock of hair curls across her cheek, “I imagine you had your reasons not to.” Then she gives a relieved sigh and chuckles, shaking her head. “Now if you were still married and didn’t tell me about it, then I would’ve been mad.”

With a shrug, Peggy makes her way to the bed and sits down beside her, still balancing the cup of tea in her hands. “Trust me, you’re not treading on anyone’s toes by being here with me.”

It isn’t that Peggy completely shut down that side of herself after the divorce, but relations outside of work were hard enough to keep up with her own family let alone a string of lovers. She prefers to keep things simple in that regard. Angie just happens to be the lone exception.

In response Angie’s foot shoots out and she pushes down on Peggy’s toes with a grin. When Peggy finally caves and cracks a smile, Angie nudges her with her shoulder, gently so as not to spill tea over the white sheets. “Was that your important meeting last night?”

Angie always was too perceptive for her own good.

Taking a sip of tea, Peggy nods. “Family dinner didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. Not that it ever does.”

Angie is a long length of warmth pressed up against Peggy’ side from hip to shoulder. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Peggy studies the cup and turns it so that the black tea slides up dangerously close to the rim. Then she lifts the cup to her lips to take another sip. “That depends.” She turns to Angie and gives a weak smile. “Do you have the day free?”

Angie reaches over and takes a gulp of the tea for herself. She teases, “I’m sure I can clear my busy schedule.”

 

* * *

* * *

 

_July 1957 -- Westchester County, New York_

 

She’s reading the file she left on her office desk when a noise makes her jerk and the dream disappears. The bedside clock reads 3:52, and the colon flashes three times before she hears the noise again.

“Daniel.” The pillow muffles her voice and she shifts on the bed. “Daniel, Richard’s fallen out again.”

It would be the third time this week that Richard has rolled out of bed. The morning after the first time it happened, he told a very excited story about batting in the World Series, which is strange because he doesn't play baseball, or any other team sports. Richard reminds her a lot of herself as a child, never wanting to count on the success of others to secure his own when it's easier to just do it himself.

Peggy knows it's the third time this week because she’s been at home each night to hear it. A year ago she may not have been home to hear him fall even once, but she's finally got things arranged just so.

Before bed this evening, she and Daniel had pinned his sheets to the mattress, which Richard had found hilarious — something about crystals that she didn't understand through his laughter. Maybe tomorrow night they will move his mattress to the floor.

Daniel grunts, but nothing more, and after a moment she pulls herself from their bed, not bothering to stop for her robe, despite the chill that's settled across New York having snuck through the cracks and into the house.

Moonlight streams through the windows at the top of the staircase, and she makes her way by its glow, stepping over Elizabeth’s field hockey gear, scattered along the hallway, then over Richard’s tennis bag as a shadow shifts behind her.

Peggy freezes, and every tendril of sleep disappears from her mind.

She finishes the step she was taking, coming to a stop by Richard's doorway, Elizabeth's bedroom behind her with its door closed tight. Richard is tucked safely in his bed, lit by a tiny night light. The pins had worked.

She sinks down a little and gropes at the wall until her fingers make contact with one of the pieces of equipment leaning there. Peggy hopes its the hockey stick; tennis rackets don't make very good weapons.

There is a moment of absolute stillness, and then Daniel's snore echos through the space between them and the shadow gains mass and form and runs straight at her.

She has a good second or two to wonder what the hell is going on, and why it's going on in her home, and then she has to stop thinking or she'll end up dead and then there is every possibility that her children will too.

It is the stick in her hand, thankfully, its wrapping tacky against her palm but its weight solid, and she runs in the direction of the movement. Peggy gets a good swing at the side of the person's head, but it's not enough to slow him. He bats her aside, grabbing at her wrist to haul her around. They collide with each other, and his height wins him the advantage, sending her into the wall.

"Shh--" she bites off, the impact ricocheting through her ribs. Yes, shh, she thinks, because Richard and Elizabeth are sleeping, which at the very least means they won't come out here and find their mother, who as far as they are aware works in a government office doing boring government things, engaged in hand to hand combat with an intruder.

Peggy hauls herself off the wall, and when she turns around it's to the sight of this intruder standing in Richard's doorway.

The noise that she lets out is dragged up from the very depths of her gut, and it makes him glance away from her son, first at Peggy and then in the other direction, before he bolts down the hall, away from Peggy and, far more importantly, away from her son. Peggy actually smiles grimly, because down that hall is her office, and in her office she can deal with this properly.

* * *

When it's over, Peggy barely recognises the room. There's light coming from the hallway that wasn't there before, and it casts the room in a harsh shadow.

The file she was reading before bed still sits on the desk. The few books she's carried with her from school and through the war remain standing tall: _A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Persuasion,_ and a tattered copy of _Peter Pan and Wendy,_ which she's been meaning to show Elizabeth. A ceramic… something, that one of the children made her sits undisturbed.

But her chair is overturned, the desk draw hanging loose from its home. The gun in her hand gives off the faintest heat, and it seeps through the material of her nightgown across her thigh. And there is a dead man bleeding across her carpet.

Peggy can't quite catch her breath and her shoulder is pulsing in agony.

It's a sign of poor technique, something that hasn't happened since she was a cadet. She doesn't remember retrieving the gun from her desk. In fact she's surprised, in the very back of her mind that's paying any attention to more practical matters right now, that she did. There's a perfectly serviceable briefcase sitting on the desk, along with a paper weight and a stapler.

She could have killed him just as easily with any of those.

From the look of him, she can see why he had been so difficult to deal with immediately. Tall and well-built, he doesn't look like a burglar. Peggy kneels beside him, the carpet rough on her knees, and takes a hold of his shoulder, rolling him onto his back.

Peggy knows his face.

"Mom!" Richard's voice startles her, as does Daniel's shout at Richard to not go in there. In here.

Daniel's right, he mustn't come in here. He shouldn't see this. Richard and Elizabeth shouldn't see any of this, shouldn't know about this life that she rolls around in everyday, coating herself in its filth.

She pulls herself up from the carpet, dropping the gun onto the desk as she moves over to the doorway. Daniel's got a hold of a struggling Richard, stopping him from running in Peggy's, and the dead spy's, direction. Elizabeth is tucked against the doorway, half in her bedroom and unwilling to come out any further.

"It's okay, darlings." Of the three people looking at her with wide eyes, Elizabeth looks the least convinced. "It's over now."

"Go in with your sister," Daniel says to Richard, nudging him towards Elizabeth's room without taking his eyes from Peggy at the end of the hall.

He starts to move towards her, Elizabeth glaring at her as she closes the door, and Peggy has to remind herself that Daniel himself is an agent. The sound of his crutch click, click, clicking up the hall measures out the time it takes her to realise that matters not a single bit.

"Are you okay?" Daniel asks, hand resting on her elbow as he steps past her into the office. "Jesus, you actually shot him."

Yes, she actually did, and she would do it again.

"Daniel, I know him." She swallows, and Daniel steps back to take her in. Her mind scrambles to fit it all together, but one thing is certain. "This is my fault."

"Peg, what do you mean it's your fault?" Peggy pushes past him and back into the office. "How do you know him?"

"I have to call the office," she says. She reaches for the phone on the desk, but Daniel has followed her in and slams it back into the cradle.

"What did you mean?"

"He's HYDRA." Daniel's stunned, and she looks away. Her eyes land on the file on her desk, and the truth of her words surges through her. This is all her fault.

The file, while containing nothing overly significant, is marked Clearance Level 9. Everything SHIELD has about HYDRA is Clearance Level 9. She shouldn't have had it out of the office. She shouldn't even have had it out of The Vault. But it was nearing half six, and dinner was at seven, and she had to be home by then. If someone saw her leave The Vault with it, they might have thought it was something more important than the clearance level implied.

"Peggy, HYDRA doesn't exist anymore."

Daniel doesn't know what he's talking about, of course. He left SHIELD three days before they were married to work for the FBI. Daniel may be an agent, but he's not her agent, and he has no idea what they have been chasing across the globe for the last eight years, the nameless threat that feels like a ghost. Daniel has no idea, and now Peggy has brought it into their home and let it look at her children.

* * *

Daniel stays with the children.

"Don't let them come out here," she says, and he glares at her, before closing Elizabeth's bedroom door between them.

It's a small team from SHIELD that arrives, two of her best intelligence people and a clean up crew that leave the carpet spotless and stinking of clean and everything she never wanted to touch this place. SHIELD, and the dead body, are gone before dawn fully breaks.

Only then does Peggy realise she's still in the nightgown she wore while murdering a man fifteen feet from her children and she can't stand to be in it another moment. She tears down the hallway, ripping the clothing from her body before she reaches her bedroom.

Standing in her wardrobe, she means to find herself something to wear--she has to head into the office immediately; all things aside, this has given them a huge break--but instead she pulls her suitcase down from the top shelf, tossing it on the bed.

In 1946, Peggy owned so few things she could move from place to place without filling a single suitcase, and now all she can gather is the most useful of work outfits and leave behind this house filled with more things than she could ever carry, as if she had tried to build a safe, normal life around their little world. A cocoon, like the one, she suddenly realises, Richard had been laughing about only hours before as she pinned him into his bed.

She knows what she has to do now, even as she tries not to think about what it will do to her place in that world.

Her suitcase is full and she’s dressed once more, considering the picture frames on the bedside table when the door cracks open and Daniel looks in on her, her back to him as she takes in those freshly made people and how very poorly she has gone about everything since that day eight years ago. Daniel shoves the door open so he can come in, the empty hooks at the back clattering against the wall, then presses it silently closed.

"What are you doing?"

Something she should have done a long time ago. She actually feels faint at the thought of how much danger she's put them in, since the very moment they came into existence. For years she has moved between this world and that of SHIELD, thinking she had done everything imaginable to keep the two separate, that one was safe because of the work she was doing in the other.

She picks up the photos, the frames cold against her fingers, tucks them into the case and snaps it closed. "Making sure this never happens again."

"By leaving?" Daniel moves across the room, but he stops halfway between her and the door, as if he might try to stop her. It is possible; he's done it before after all.

Another day in a long list of days when people she loved could have been hurt because she couldn't take care of them. Steve has always been the big one, but it was the beginning of a pattern, the common element always being Peggy herself.

Daniel's eyes flicker between the suitcase and Peggy, and he asks again, "You're really just leaving?"

"I'm not leaving," she says, and pulls the suitcase from the bed with a great deal of effort. "But I know that by staying they'll only get hurt."

"Sounds an awful lot like leaving to me." Daniel scrubs at his face, and when he looks at her again it's with an openness that hasn't been between them for a long time now. It's funny that she never noticed it was missing until now. "And you think your leaving won't hurt them? Or me?"

That he includes himself there surprises her.

Not that they've been unhappy--far from it. It has proven to be very easy to be happy with a life you never wanted, when you've stopped wanting anything at all. Daniel had turned out to be surprisingly easy to love, because he actually loved her. Selfishly, she'd allowed that to be enough for her, when it never should have been enough for him.

That she wanted the children as much as she did, from the moment she knew she was pregnant, had set a fire in her veins that threatened to destroy her. Because of Daniel she had them, and for that she truly does love him.

But none of that matters now.

"At least they won't end up dead. I won't be responsible for my children being murdered in their beds, Daniel."

He steps closer then, and there's anger in his voice now. "You know, you say 'my children' like that means something, Peggy, but you do this and that will change."

"They don't stop being my children because of this." Even as she says it she feels the lie of it on her tongue. "I— I gave them my name, Daniel. They are mine.”

"You can’t just slap a name on something and call it your own!” He steps closer then, and lowers his voice. "You certainly taught me that much."

The words bruise her, and it must show on her face because Daniel looks away then, shamed. Deep down she had wondered if he truly minded that she never took his name. But never enough to ask. When the twins were born it was Peggy who was bothered by it more than Daniel, and she had insisted: Elizabeth Margaret and Richard Carter. Daniel had been charmed at the time.

Now he just looks ill as she moves towards the door.

He takes a seat on the bed, on her side where her suitcase had been resting. "This won't protect them."

"No," she agrees. "Not entirely. But it will certainly help."

"Just like everything else has? All the late nights and running around? You were right, you know. You're not leaving. You can’t leave if you’ve never been here.”

She has nothing to say to that. He's only trying to hurt her; it just happens that he's succeeding. That this month she succeed in coming home six nights a week doesn't make up for the seven years of missed dinners and plays and bedtimes and breakfast times and every other thing in between.

She can't give them that.

"Are they asleep?" she asks from the doorway.

Daniel's silent too long, and she turns back to look at him, and only then does he answer with a quiet, "Yes."

He's lying, but she doesn't look in on them as she leaves.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

_You in there, a pitied pair_

_Denoted by a scene unfair_

_Will you make my children bare_

_The consequences everywhere_

_Imminent you seem to be_

_a picture of fragility_

_What is it that you think of me?_

_Is it a woman that you see?_

_-“Origins” by Tennis_

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

The sound of the heat clicking back on is enough to draw Peggy from a predawn doze. The apartment is cold against her face, but beneath the blankets Angie's body radiates so much heat that Peggy's damp with sweat where they're pressed against each other.

It is a feeling she has rapidly come to believe may be vital to her existence.

Some deep, visceral part of her wants to trap them away like this forever, tangled together in the warm darkness of the apartment Peggy has never much liked before now.

"What are you doing?" Angie's sleep-slurred voice asks, and Peggy hesitates for a second, caught in the act of pulling the blankets up over their heads to envelope them completely in the warmth.

It's a question she's asked herself repeatedly these last couple of weeks. Peggy has never been good at accepting good things in her life, and the ease with which she and Angie have fallen into this thing, nameless and nebulous, that they've been doing should frighten her. It's there in the back of her mind, that waiting for the instinctual response to things like sleep-warm bodies clinging to her person, but it hasn't happened yet. The creeping want from that very first night has only grown stronger, crawling beneath her skin and in between her ribs.

They haven't spent every night together, but Peggy's lost track of the last time she went to bed alone, so it must be close.

"Nothing, darling, go back to sleep." She pulls the blankets more snugly down over them, Angie making an amused sound as she shifts around to drape herself more fully over Peggy's body.

Angie's silent so long, lying there in the grey darkness, Peggy thinks she has in fact gone back to sleep, but then she burrows into Peggy further with a deliberate flood of tension through her muscles. "Don't wanna go to school today."

Threading her fingers through Angie's hair, Peggy scratches at the back of her head until Angie relaxes against her again. "I'm sure it's not that bad."

"It is," Angie groans. "First day of rehearsals are always that bad."

It's an unwelcome reminder that, their time together aside, Angie is in New York for work.

"The twins are going to see your show," Peggy says into the quiet. "They each have a ticket."

She hasn't mentioned them since that morning. They don't live with her, although she has a second bedroom they share on the rare occasion they stay with her. She hasn't even seen them since the night Elizabeth called Helen mom. They're not a part of her life. There's been no reason to mention them.

Except that they're in every part of her life, their existence touches everything she does, and soon they'll touch this too, even if it is just to sit in the audience and see Angela Martin from a distance.

Angie doesn't say anything, but the arm across her waist shifts from simply resting there to hugging Peggy's ribs for just a moment. Angie, who protected her from Daniel and Thompson all those years ago without question or demand, who hasn't asked about the twins since that morning, even though Peggy has seen her studying the two photos on the nightstand as if they might hold the secrets to life itself.

"They would like you," she says, pressing a kiss against Angie's temple.

"Well that's nice," Angie replies, giving a little shrug. "I don't think they'd be buying tickets to my show if they didn't."

"That's Angela Martin. I think they would like _you_."

Against her shoulder, Peggy can actually feel the heat flood into Angie's cheeks. "Shut up, English."

"I know, I know," Peggy chuckles. Even after all this time, Angie can't seem to take a compliment. "I talk too much."

"Damn right," Angie says against a yawn. "Okay, I gotta razzle dazzle in a little while. Shut up for real now."

"Alright," Peggy agrees. "But only because you asked nicely."

"Ahuh," Angie says, already halfway back to sleep, face pressed against Peggy's neck. "Like pigs in a blanket."

 _Like a cocoon,_ Peggy thinks, snuggling back into her pillow and allowing herself to go back to sleep as well.

She dreams of lying on a beach in the sun, and when she wakes again it is broad daylight outside and Angie is snoring none too softly against her shoulder.

"Fuck—" she directs to the ceiling, a shock of adrenaline surging through her system as she realises how late she will be getting to the office. She nudges Angie awake, less gently than she would like; she would let Angie sleep, but her arm is dead beneath Angie's head, and she needs that to get up. "Darling, wake up."

"What time is it?" Angie asks through a yawn.

"Late. Very, very—" Peggy pulls her arm free as Angie rolls against the sheets to stretch, in a manner that has drawn Peggy back to bed more than once. " _Late._ "

* * *

Peggy rushes through her morning routine, and as she attempts not to burn herself on the curling iron she can hear Angie doing vocal warm ups in the kitchen. When she's done, nearly tripping as she tries to slip her heels on and walk at the same time, Angie is buttering a pile of toast at least seven slices high.

"You're not leaving until you eat at least one of these." Angie sets a slice in the hand Peggy holds out reflexively. "No arguments."

Peggy snaps up a bite of the toast, munching on it for a moment as Angie shakes a dusting of sugar mixed with cinnamon over a slice for herself.

"I'm going to miss this," Angie says when she's done, arching onto her toes to kiss the crumbs from Peggy's mouth.

When she pulls away, Peggy's face must show the absolute panic that has washed over her. "Hey," Angie says, touching Peggy's face with the gentlest of fingers. "Not like that."

"What—" But she can't make her mouth work.

"Much as I've enjoyed playing the little wife," Angie says, throwing Peggy a look, "I'm not exactly 'kept woman' material."

"Is that what you think I—"

"Oh my god, would you calm down?" Angie removes the toast from Peggy's grip, tossing the mangled piece of bread onto the kitchen bench. "I'm trying to tell you something nice."

"Has that started?" Peggy asks wanly. Angie's always had a gift for turning Peggy in circles, but she's excelling at it today. "I'd love to hear something nice right now."

Angie levels her with a glare. "Well, shit, now I _won't_ tell you I love you. Have a nice day at work, English."

When Angie turns away, Peggy reaches out as if to grab her arm but stops just before touching her. “No, wait. Please—”

“I just meant—” Angie clears her throat and refuses to look Peggy in the eye before continuing. “I just meant that with rehearsals starting up, I won’t be around so much anymore. And I liked it. Being around, I mean.”

"Oh." She feels a little light headed.

And now Angie’s looking at her almost expectantly, her eyes filled with a nervous kind of hope Peggy couldn’t dare to name.

The thing is, Peggy has absolutely no difficulty in summoning up the words to say them back to Angie. They've been there for so long they're probably dated 1946, and it feels astonishing that they've never been said before now.

She actually feels a little silly.

"Darling," she says, in a tone that makes Angie's gaze turn worried. "I don't know how you don't already know this, but I'm ridiculously in love with you."

Angie blinks at her, just once, and then slaps her across the arm. "Jesus H Christ, Peggy. _Oh,_ " she repeats, mocking. "Scaring a girl like that. People like to hear things once in a while, you know?"

Peggy captures Angie's still flailing hand, pressing a kiss to the knuckles. "I love you," she says, pulling Angie close.

"See, sometimes you don't talk too much." 

* * *

“Agent Bauer, where is your report on the South African Border War?”

Agent Bauer is startled so badly at having the Director of SHIELD suddenly standing at the entrance of his cubicle, that he spills coffee onto his tie. She watches him mop at the spots of coffee with a spare napkin from his lunch. “I— uh.” He looks nervously from his tie to Peggy and back again. “I thought that was due in a week and a half, ma’am.”

One eyebrow quirks up in a cool, calculating expression that could make the most staunch diplomats squirm in their seats. “For future reference, when I say ‘bi-weekly’ I mean twice a week, not every other week. Always assume I want to be more informed, not less.” She shifts her stance, angling herself to leave. “You have until tomorrow morning.”

Agent Bauer nods frantically. “Of course, ma’am. Right away, ma’am.”

Peggy strides away down the line of cubicles, their occupants studiously avoiding her gaze.

By the time Peggy arrived at the office, she was without a doubt the latest she has ever been in her entire life. Somehow, in a matter of hours, the entire office has managed to go to the dogs, and she's having a very difficult time remembering why she hired at least fifty percent of the people who work for her.

Word of her mood—and she'd been in such a good one for all of five minutes before she realised the chaos she had stepped into—spread across the office, and her agents aren't wrong to want to steer clear of her. Of course, if people would bring her the things she has asked for, she wouldn't have to bloody well—

“Terrorising our staff again, Director Carter?” Howard falls into step beside her, gait jaunty and a half peeled banana in hand.

“I was getting a cup of tea and I simply couldn't help myself." She holds up the tea in question. "Besides, someone has to do it, and God knows it won’t be you unless they’re of the feminine disposition.” She glances at him askance. His cheek bulges around a mouthful of fruit as he chews.

“You wound me!” He lays a hand over his heart. “To imply that I would discriminate against the fine male specimens of this establishment!”

Peggy rolls her eyes. “Don’t let our HR manager hear that.”

“Funny you should mention Tim. We get along very well, I’ll have you know.” He smirks and takes another bite of the banana.

“Oh, Lord.” Peggy groans, casting her eyes skyward. “Please stop talking, Howard.”

"I was just going to inquire if I could be any assistance with whatever's got your panties in a twist and half the office in a state. Christ, Pegs, it's okay to be late once in a blue moon."

Peggy had hoped at least Howard hadn't noticed.

"It's not like you're playing hookie with some young piece of—"

She doesn't mean to go deathly still, leaving herself behind in Howard's wake.

One late morning aside, surely she hasn't been in any way obvious about anything, and she certainly would never voluntarily tell him. Angie's presence in her life is too new, too precious, to be subjected to the likes of Howard Stark's mockery, no matter how good natured. Maybe in a million years she will think about telling him, but not when they are only just coming to understand how much they mean to each other.

"Holy smokes," Howard blurts. "You are!"

Apparently she's quite given the game away.

But Howard's incredulity bolsters her, and she resumes her path back to her office. Fixing him with a glower, Peggy attempts an affronted air. "I don't know what you're talking about."

He holds up his hands in mock surrender. “Your secret’s safe with me. Although between this and your car…” He shakes his head and sighs, “I thought I was supposed to be the one who has a mid-life crisis.”

"Go away, Howard!" She's not going to give him the satisfaction of confirming, any further than she already has, what he could only be guessing wildly at.

"Well if you're gonna be like that, then your panties can stay twisted." With a too gleeful chuckle, he breaks off and heads towards his office directly across from hers. "But stop yelling at the minions, Pegs!"

She shakes her head and opens the door to her own office, raising the cup to her lips as she does so to sip at the tea. It's only her second cup of the day; if she had been on time she would be well on her way to her third by now.

Sitting down at the desk, Peggy pulls a report from the stack in her in tray towards her and flips it open. It's not the one she wants, but it still needs to be dealt with, and she would rather think about this than Howard and Angie interacting ever again.

She slurps at the tea while she reads, brows furrowed in the concentration she forces upon herself. She isn’t more than a paragraph or two into the recent movement on the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean, when the phone rings.

“Carter,” she answers simply and sharply, eyes still glued to the report.

“Peggy?"

“Daniel?" Peggy sits up straighter. "Is everything alright?”

The last time Daniel called her at work, Elizabeth had been in the hospital after taking a hockey ball to the side of the head. Peggy had been between phone calls with President Kennedy at the time and hadn't managed to get to the hospital before Elizabeth was discharged.

“Everything’s fine,” he assures her, voice calm, level. “I was just calling to speak to Anna about—"

In the rush of relief, she forgets to hold her tongue for a moment. "You know you can always call _me_ and tell _me_ about _my_ plans. I'm not a complete moron, I can write on a calendar."

"You know what, Peggy, forget it. I'll talk to Anna later."

"Wait," she calls out, half hoping he'll hang up anyway. "Daniel, I'm sorry. I just…." She can hear her sigh echo down the phoneline.

They've never been good at this. In front of the twins they can be perfectly civilised. But the twins are dual bruises that they share, and all they have ever managed to do is press against them until the hurt feels brand new.

"You're always _just,_ Peggy." Daniel's silent for a long moment, and Peggy takes it. "You got a pen?"

"Go ahead," she answers, in lieu of the storm of words she swallows back down, taking up a pen in one hand and her tea in the other, receiver jammed between her ear and shoulder.

"Dinner this Sunday—you're taking them out so don't be late."

"Where do you think they'd like to go?"

"Nope," Daniel says with a spark of good humour. "You gotta work that one out."

"Fine." She scribbles across the corner of her nuclear arms treaty report. She’ll have it redacted later. "Is that all?"

"No, then there's, uh..." Daniel falls into an awkward silence. "You remember Helen and I are going away."

Of course. Daniel’s perfect belated honeymoon weekend with his perfect wife in his perfect marriage. She hadn't forgotten, she just didn't want to remember.

“What about it?” she says, and she sounds icier than she intended. The pen clatters noisily against the desk.

“The twins will be staying with you, remember? If you can't….”

Immediately, Peggy wonders how Angie will feel about the twins being impressed upon their already shrinking bubble. It would help if she knew herself how she felt about it.

She hasn't really thought about the twins meeting Angie. However horrifying Howard's reaction might be, the possible responses from her own children are a far greater concern. But maybe they will surprise her, and for once not judge her harshly for her choices.

And they do like Angie, in a manner of speaking.

In her head, she imagines introducing the twins to Angie. Elizabeth with that uncharacteristic excitement from the other night, and Richard blushing furiously. Maybe they can all go out to dinner some place where Angie won't draw attention. A proper family dinner.

Peggy doesn’t realise she’s smiling and not paying attention to a word Daniel’s saying until his voice jerks her back to reality.

“Peggy, are you there?”

Starting, Peggy tips tea all down her lap. With a hiss she puts the cup down and jumps to her feet, tea soaking down the length of her skirt. “I’m listening,” she snaps as she drags the phone with her as she crosses the room to grab a napkin from her purse, careful not to let the phone cord knock over the cup.

“So, is it alright?” Daniel asks.

She rummages through her memory to grasp at what he’d just said. “Of course it is. You don't ever have to ask that.”

“If you change your mind, let me know before the end of the week, and I’ll have someone else look after them.”

“I won’t change my mind.” Peggy dabs at the stains on her skirt, and makes a face. It’ll need to be dry cleaned. What a pain. “I want them to visit, Daniel.”

“Alright,” he sighs through the line. “I’ll let you get back to work then. And don't forget dinner on Sunday.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” she says, moving back to her desk and hanging up the phone.

She barely has enough time to fret over her skirt and lament the loss of tea before her office door flies open to admit Anna.

"Sorry, I'm sorry," Anna offers in a perfunctory manner, handing Peggy a new cup of tea that she couldn't possibly have known Peggy needed. "I was dealing with Mister Stark."

Better Anna than Peggy this time. Mrs Jarvis is one of the few people who can properly corral Howard into some semblance of acceptable behaviour, and she has served as Peggy's office manager and all around general life saver for more years than Peggy likes to count now.

"I assume that was Daniel." Flipping open a notepad, Anna takes a seat in front of Peggy's desk. "What were the dates for the children?"

Anna is a life saver in more ways than one.

Peggy suspects it was Anna who instigated Daniel's monthly calls to settle the times Peggy would see the twins.

"Weekend from next," she answers, thumbing at her temple in agitation. "And dinner on Sunday."

Anna takes down the dates of Peggy's appointments to see her own children, which will then be put into the diary Anna keeps.

"Just Richard and Elizabeth this month, yes?"

Peggy makes a sound of agreement around the sip of infinitely better tea she's just taken. "Could you find somewhere for me to take them?"

Anna merely tuts, and stands to leave. "Do not forget to go to Miss Martin's theater this evening," she says, before disappearing behind the closed office door, leaving Peggy in peace.

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

_November 1962 -- Manhattan, New York_

 

The twins look around the apartment--Peggy's apartment--with matching looks of disbelief.

She had moved out into her own place four years ago during the divorce, back into the City to be closer to work. Before this she has always been the one to go out to the old house to visit them, but she finally like they're old enough to stay for the weekend. Only because Daniel is away on business, but Peggy tries not to focus on that so much as on the fact that they are _here_. With her. At last.

And they look so out of place. They know it too. They shuffle their feet like foreign invaders, awkwardly shifting their overnight bags on their shoulders, and glancing around them at the sparse furnishings. In the shadow of night the place looks especially Spartan, the few lights that have been switched on casting narrow pools across the hard lines of Peggy’s work table, which is in fact the dining room table heaped with documents and paper weights and pens and pencils and even a spare straightedge and a favourite tactical knife.

She should have cleaned up. She should have tried to make the place warmer, more hospitable. She should have -

For a brief panicked moment Peggy thinks that she’s forgotten to set up their beds in the spare bedroom, until she remembers that she has already taken care of that earlier in the week. Thank God.

Tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear, she digs out two spare keys from the pocket of her pinstripe slacks, “These are for you.” She hands one of each of them, “If I’m not here, you can just let yourselves in.”

Richard shoves the key into the pocket of his jeans, whereas Elizabeth strings hers on a keychain dangling with brightly coloured charms.

“Can we put our stuff down?” Richard shrugs at his bag.

“Oh! Yes! Of course!” Peggy points over them towards the hallway that opens out into the living and dining area, “Your room is the first on the left. Mine is the second on the right, and the bathroom is the first on the right.”

Without a word they turn and trudge over to where she has directed them. A bright light flicks on in their room, and she can hear the clunk of shoes and clothes as they drop their bags onto the hardwood floors.

“Shall I make us something to eat?” Peggy calls out, already moving to the kitchen.

She opens the refrigerator before she realises that she had forgotten to stock it with food. There sits a glass container of milk that she uses for her cups of tea, and hidden in the back is a pat of butter scraped down to a small nib, and a jar of half-eaten marmalade for her morning toast. That is it. Oh, wait:  a bag of carrots lies discarded in the bottom drawer, and they look like they’ve been there so long that they’ve begun to stew in primordial soup and achieve sentience.

Peggy wrinkles her nose. She really ought to have thought this through more carefully. It’s just -- normally she grabs food on the run. Never gives it much thought. It’s just food.

Behind her she hears the twins emerge from their room and lean against the dining room table. Elizabeth’s bracelets jangle against the black-stained mahogany, “There aren’t any pillowcases, Margaret.”

Peggy freezes. She has the refrigerator half open, and she is staring at the empty trays lining the walls, the cold air seeping into her skin, and behind her a hush falls over the dining room table like a veil. Richard starts murmuring something low and rushed and panicky now to his sister. The lack of pillowcases seems to have been abandoned.

Peggy closes the refrigerator door and clears her throat, “Right, then.” She takes a deep breath and bites her bottom lip to keep it from trembling, then she turns and forces a sunny smile into place, “Shall we just go out for tea? My treat!”

The twins exchange unreadable glances.

“Sure, mom.” Richard says. He emphasises the title as though that will erase the last two minutes.

Elizabeth rolls her eyes – she’s _that_ age – and drawls sarcastically, “Yeah, sounds great.”

She doesn’t call her ‘mom’ though. She never does after that.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

Later that evening Peggy is still dressed in the same stained skirt when she steps into the shadow of the theatre's back entrance. On the other side of the rows of buildings she can hear the bustling clamour of people in the Theater District, but it is what is taking place inside that she is here to see.

She should have asked for directions on how to get legitimate access to the theatre, but instead she sneaks in past a pair of guards with a bit of well-timed sleight of hand. Flashing an ID badge stolen from a woman who had left the building in a rush a moment ago, Peggy is allowed admission without incident.

At the side of the stage she blends in with the clutch of people loitering, cast members and various hangers on, watching as Angela Martin gives the press a preview of her belated debut on the Broadway stage.

There is something in Angie that Peggy has always found captivating, but seeing her perform is like watching an explosion from a safe distance, and she spares a moment for all the times she didn't go and see one of Angie's films.

Maybe she could have gone with the twins.

When it's over, she slips away, through the grey cement corridors in search of Angie’s private room. That is a thing isn’t it? Private rooms for the stars of the show? She can hear footsteps descending the far stairwell, and the babble of cast members approaching. Head whipping around Peggy finds the room at last, and slips inside.

All around the room are Angie’s things: clothes and costumes and shoes and a spare sequined handbag. Makeup litters the shelf jutting out from a large mirror on the opposite wall, the many brushes rooted in a glass jar, their tips lightened with frequent creams and blushes. The overwhelming urge to touch these items itches at Peggy’s hands, and she allows her fingertips to drift over the soft bristles there, the action making the brush handles clink gently against glass.

Behind her the door opens, and she snatches her hand away as though burned.

“Oh!” Angie’s eyes widen at first upon seeing Peggy, but then her face softens into a smile. “You made it!”

Peggy returns the smile, tired but genuine. “I did. How’d it go?”

“Terribly! It was absolutely dreadful!”

In spite of her words however, Angie beams. She is flushed with the thrill of a recent performance, eyes bright and hot and trenchant.

Peggy knows that look. She’s seen it many times over the course of the last few weeks.

Angie steps forward, and almost instinctually Peggy steps back, pinned by the force of that stare. “Angie, we shouldn’t. Not here.”

“Why’s that?” Angie continues her approach, gaze fixed and unmoving, black dress clinging to her hips, pearls glinting at her throat.

Peggy’s lower back hits the vanity's shelf, and Angie is this presence near enough to radiate heat into her own skin through their layers of clothing. Peggy swallows, “Because….”

She can’t bring herself to finish that sentence, though. The day's frustrations linger close to the surface, but with the way Angie is looking at her, it's difficult to remember that they ever existed. Cast in the lights fringing the stage mirror, Angie looks radiant. Not at all polished and distant like Peggy has come to know she would have been until the moment she stepped into this room. Narrow beads of perspiration gleam at her temples, and her mouth breathes against Peggy’s own, open and warm. There’s a hairline fracture of space between them, when a knock sounds at the door.

Angie doesn’t pull away immediately, though she does eventually and with a shaky exhale. Running her hands through her hair, she starts to pull out pins. “Come in!” she calls.

The door opens and a young man pokes his head inside. “There are fans waiting for you out back, Angela. Do you want me to tell them to go away?”

His eyes flick to Peggy, who is still leaning against the shelf, hands gripping the edges hard. He gives her a once-over, then pays her no attention. As though he’s used to seeing strange women in Angie’s private room.

“Thank you, Jeremy. That won’t be necessary.” Angie waves him away.

He nods before leaving, and the door clicks shut behind him.

“You want to go meet fans?” Peggy asks, leaving out the additional ‘at a time like this?’

When Angie turns she’s suddenly Angela again, combing her curling hair free with her fingers so that it falls in brassy waves around her shoulders. “It’s part of the job.” She smiles as she brushes by Peggy to deposit the handful of hairpins onto the vanity. “Don’t worry. I won’t be long.”

Those are lines Peggy is all too familiar with, though not from this side of the fence. It feels surreal hearing them from someone else’s mouth, painful hearing them said with such careless honesty.

In a business-like manner Angie shimmies out of her stage costume and into her own clothes. From the way she takes no notice of Peggy’s presence, Peggy assumes she’s done this before too many times to count and with plenty of other people watching. She doesn’t attempt to scrub away her makeup however, though she does glance at herself in the mirror over Peggy’s shoulder and purses her lips in a disapproving expression as if to say _‘Good enough.’_

“Do you want to wait here?” she asks Peggy, hand on the doorknob, poised and ready to greet an adoring mob.

She doesn't understand how Angie does what she does, shifting into the person those fans are waiting to see from the woman that hides under the blankets with her in the morning. Neither Angie nor Angela is dishonest, and Peggy envies that ability to give of herself what Angie chooses to give, to draw that line with some--most, from what Peggy has seen--and run right over it for Peggy.

There was never a time when Angie wasn't exactly that much of herself with Peggy, and it's only now that Peggy realises what a gift she's been given, twice over.

Peggy shakes her head. “I’ll come. But I’ll wait in the wings where they can’t see me.”

With a nod Angie opens the door and leaves, Peggy trailing not far behind. Peggy stuffs her hands into the pockets of her coat and fishes out her gloves, preparing to ward off the encroaching chill air. At the exit the guards give Peggy a double-take when they see who she’s with, but then they’re opening the doors at Angie’s request.

To Angie it must have been a small crowd, but to Peggy it’s much larger than she was expecting. Honestly she didn’t know just what she was expecting. Certainly not a throng of people huddled in the cold for a glimpse of their favourite actress, cheering and pressing in when Angela Martin is revealed atop the steps.

Peggy hangs back just beside the still open door, while the guards accompany Angie down the stairs. Tugging her gloves on, she watches as Angie takes the hands of people and smiles amidst the flash of cameras and excited adulation. They’re the both of them completely in their elements: Angie flourishing in the spotlight, while Peggy looks on from the shadows with a gun strapped to her thigh beneath her skirt.

It’s at that moment -- Peggy’s eyes instinctively scanning the crowd for possible threats -- that she sees her.

Elizabeth.

Peggy whips behind the door, and the breath has frozen trapped in her chest like a solid thing. Carefully she peeks around as though from a foxhole. There’s no mistaking that dark bob of hair, or the shape of those large canny eyes. Peggy could recognise her anywhere.

Swearing softly to herself, Peggy jerks behind the door and presses herself against the wall. Her head tilts back so that she blinks furiously up at the ceiling. She whispers a silent prayer that Angie won’t suddenly appear in the doorway and drag her out into the open for everyone to see.

When Angie does eventually appear in the doorway, Peggy remains rooted in place, hands clenching into fists. The crowd has, as far as she can tell without daring to reveal her face again, dispersed.

“You ready?” Angie places a warm hand on Peggy’s arm.

With a twitchy nod, Peggy continues to hold her breath as she rounds the corner. She half expects Elizabeth to be there, standing directly in the centre of the back alleyway, like a scene directly from Peggy’s nightmares -- give or take a few pernicious HYDRA agents. Instead the alleyway is completely empty but for the guards flanking the bottom of the stairs. They murmur something low as Angie thanks them each by name. Then Angie is looping her arm through Peggy’s and dragging her along.

They're halfway down the block in the direction of the subway before Peggy remembers that she drove her car to work that morning.

“So, where are you parked?” Angie asks, bumping Peggy’s shoulder with her own in a manner that could be described as conspiratorial.

Clearing her throat, Peggy jerks her head. “This way.”

When they arrive, Angie gives a long appreciative whistle. Immediately she drops Peggy’s arm and rushes over to the car. “Is this a 275 GTS Ferrari?” She glances over her shoulder. “Never would have expected you to have such good taste.”

Peggy shrugs, tucking her hands into her jacket pockets against the cold. She misses Angie’s warmth already, and wants nothing more than to go to Angie's hotel where they'll be spending the night. Maybe she can convince Angie to join her in that enormous bathtub. "I believe Daniel called it a mid-life crisis."

He had, and the words remind her of Howard's from earlier. God, what they all must think of her.

It must come out more harshly than she intended, because Angie turns her back on the car completely. "Is everything okay? Did something happen today?"

What a horribly loaded question.

"Some people were late with reports," is what she decides is the most immediately relevant answer.

"Aw, honey," Angie says, coming back over to take Peggy's hand. "That's too bad."

Angie clearly doesn't buy it for a second that reports are what is truly bothering her, but she makes some more comforting sounds, and Peggy's appalled at the way she rests her head against Angie's shoulder and lets herself be soothed.

They've been standing there for quite some time when Angie urges Peggy away from where she's buried her face. "Let's get you home."

"In my crisis car," she grumbles, pulling her keys out of her purse.

“Well, I approve,” Angie grins and strokes her hand over the bonnet of the car. For a moment it looks like she might beg to have a poke around the engine, if the way she longingly bites her bottom lip is any indication, but then she says, “Shall we?”

"Do you want to drive?" Peggy asks instead, and the sound Angie makes does more to drag Peggy from her mood than anything else. 

* * *

"By the way," Angie calls out from the bathroom, picking up their conversation from before she jumped into the shower. "I'm pretty sure 'bi-weekly' means every two weeks."

"It doesn't," Peggy yawns, and pulls herself from the sheets. She snags Angie's robe from the foot of the bed, taking it into the bathroom.

Angie allows Peggy to wrap the robe around her, a smacking kiss to Peggy's cheek her reward. "Thanks."

"Can't have you catching a cold now," Peggy says, wrapping her arms around Angie and resting her chin on Angie's shoulder to watch them in the mirror, the edges of which are tinted with steam. "Opening night's not that far away."

"You'll be able to make it, right?"

"I promise." She sighs against Angie's neck, buries her face against the skin there and groans in frustration. "If people don't start bringing me reports on time I'll have nothing else to do anyway."

Angie elbows Peggy gently. "So glad I rank slightly above nothing else to do."

"Nothing else to do and averting a global crisis."

Angie hums in amusement as she shakes some moisturiser from its tube. "That's more like it."

"Not that we'll be averting anything the way things are going."

She probably sounds like a broken record to Angie, and she swallows the rest of her complaints as Angie rubs the cream into her face. It's the same cream Angie used when they were living together, or at least it smells the same, and Peggy noses along Angie's neck for a moment, lost in the memory.

When she's done, Angie leans back against Peggy, reaching behind her to rub at Peggy's thigh. "Are late reports really that big a deal?"

"These ones are." Peggy's eyes drift shut against the soothing motion of Angie's hand. "They're the movement patterns for the military. We have to keep track of what they're doing every day because their numbers are so large the forewarning is the only advantage we have."

Beneath her chin, Angie's shoulder shrugs. "Maybe the pattern got complicated?"

Peggy blinks her eyes open at that. "What makes you think so?"

"Are the reports usually twice a week?" Angie asks, snagging a jar of eye cream from the counter.

Peggy keeps her place leaning against Angie's shoulder, watching her work the cream into her skin. "They are," she eventually answers.

"Maybe your guy's having trouble."

"But—" Her agents don't _have_ trouble, despite all evidence to the contrary today.

Angie puts the jar away, and turns to face Peggy, looping her arms around Peggy's neck. "You're probably really scary to do things for, Peg. You work harder than everyone and you make it look effortless. It's intimidating."

"It's not _effortless._ " It's not even easy, or safe, or anything good. But it's what she needs to do, and Angie of all people should—

"I know that, hon." Angie rubs at Peggy's shoulder, down across the flat of her chest where Peggy's heartbeat has started to race. Her other hand traces across Peggy's back, stilling at the place where two scars sit above her scapula even all these years later. "I didn't say that. All I'm saying is it's hard to tell someone when you can't give them what they want because you're having trouble. Find out what the trouble is."

Peggy's trying to think of some way to respond to that, when it occurs to her that Angie might be speaking from experience. "Did you used to find me intimidating?"

"Well, yeah," Angie says without hesitation.

Peggy flinches at how much that hurts, to hear that even Angie would find her to be so difficult to deal with, and she finds herself blinking against the threat of tears.

Angie doesn't shy away, instead she looks up at Peggy with an unexpectedly shy grin. "Intimidating but inspiring. Maybe even because of the intimidating."

That's… actually a very nice thing to hear, and Peggy lets her forehead rest against Angie's, noses brushing. It's just so much easier to let Angie's rose tinted view be her own for a while. She doesn't want to be difficult tonight.

"Did you now," Peggy finally says, voice rough with spent emotion.

"Yep." Angie arches onto her toes, nipping at Peggy's lip even as she strokes her arm in comfort, allowing the moment of upset slip away. "Sexy, too."

"Oh really," Peggy says, capturing Angie's mouth in a kiss. "You should tell me more about that."

Angie’s hands are smooth and buttery from her facial cream, fingers dancing a path across Peggy’s collarbone, revealed by a loose button on her silk blouse. She tugs at the next button down until it pops free. “I’m not sure if you noticed, but the first time you walked into that old automat I spilled coffee on the arm of another customer.”

At that Peggy snorts. “You always had a talent for grace,” she teases.

“You’re one to talk,” Angie shoots back, tugging at the high waistband of Peggy’s tea-stained skirt. “Need help with that?”

It’s corny, and Angie delivers it so completely deadpan that Peggy huffs with laughter. “I believe you were in the middle of telling me something?”

“Too right,” Angie hums. She drags the zipper of Peggy’s skirt down so that the material slips from Peggy’s hips to the tiles. “You remember that time I helped you in off the window ledge?”

“How could I forget?” Peggy murmurs, tilting her head to the side as Angie grazes her teeth lightly across her shoulder.

“Well,” Angie says, mouthing a line up Peggy’s neck, fingers flicking off the clasps of Peggy’s stocking clips. “It was a struggle not to kiss you right then and there, let me tell you. What with you looking all windswept.”

Peggy can remember thinking her hair must have looked a fright at the time. Her skin had been cold from exposure out on the side of that building, so that when she’d pulled Angie in for a hug, Angie had felt that much warmer to the touch.

Now Angie seems just as warm as she had all those years ago. She slides Peggy’s knickers down, and Peggy kicks the material away when it reaches her ankles as Angie releases the rest of her underwear. “Here I thought I looked like a trainwreck,” she says honestly.

Angie laughs against her throat. “In that case you pull off ‘trainwreck’ with aplomb.”

Peggy has a snappy retort on the tip of her tongue, but it’s swallowed by a sharp inhalation that catches in the back of her throat as Angie turns them, nudging Peggy back until her thighs hit the cold bevelled edge of the marble countertop. Angie runs her tongue along her own fingers, and then her mouth is suddenly on Peggy's, the kiss soft even as Angie scratches up Peggy's thigh with her other hand.

Peggy’s hands fist in the downy fabric of Angie’s robe, and she gasps against Angie’s mouth as slick fingers move between her legs, tracing her folds before pressing between them to slip along the edge of her clit. Sliding her hands beneath the robe, Peggy clutches at Angie’s bare shoulders, the skin there still warm and damp from her recent shower. Angie’s other hand comes up to palm at Peggy’s breast, and when she thumbs across her nipple through the brassiere, Peggy shivers.

She's wet before they break the kiss, and Angie hums appreciatively as she dips her fingers down into it, dragging it back up to run across Peggy's now ready clit before slipping inside her.

When Peggy’s breath starts to hitch and her gasping noises start up with more frequency, Angie lowers her head to Peggy’s neck and nips. A small cry escapes her then, and her hips jerk, grinding down on Angie’s fingers. Angie maintains a steady rhythm, coaxing the orgasm from her. When Peggy comes she buries her head in the crook of Angie’s warm, clean-scented shoulder, and even though she clenches her teeth, the note that escapes her is high and desperate.

The motion of her hips twitch to a slow, reluctant halt. Peggy raises her head, and Angie is looking at her with eyes that are too bright, too attentive, fingers still buried inside. Angie doesn’t blink as Peggy rocks against her again deliberately, buzzing with the release she's needed all day.

She's glad it was this and not punching Howard in the face.

“Again?” Angie asks, matching Peggy’s rhythm and evening it out. She sounds breathless, and Peggy realises Angie's hips are shifting with the same meter of her fingers inside Peggy.

"Please," Peggy says, then, "Come here." She pushes Angie's robe out of the way so that it perches on the edges of her shoulders, and her fingers find evidence of Angie's arousal before she's even touched her all that intimately.

Angie’s reaction is immediate, urgent, so much so she stumbles a little trying to move closer to Peggy. "Jesus," she gasps, shifting her feet. "Touch me already."

She does, and there's little finesse in how they fall into each other's rhythm, Peggy fitting her hand against Angie as Angie picks up where she left off, curling her fingers.  Peggy groans against Angie’s neck, trying to control the bucking of her hips as Angie ruts against her. Already a flush has spread across Angie’s skin, and she’s breathing hotly into Peggy’s shoulder. Biting her lip, Peggy uses her free hand to grasp Angie’s hip and grind her down against her hand.

With a choked cry, Angie shudders and slows, and Peggy can feel the way she's holding back. She leans back, just enough to catch Angie's attention, and she notices that Angie’s eyes are focused, staring over Peggy’s shoulder. At the mirror behind her, Peggy realises, watching their reflections in the smooth glass.

"It's okay," she forces out against Angie's ear. "Don't—"

Apparently Angie didn't need any more encouragement than that, a final artless thrust before she floods Peggy's hand, twitching against where Peggy's fingers are resting. Through it, Angie's fingers keep up their movement, and between that and the sound Angie is still letting out near her ear, Peggy misses the end of Angie's orgasm as she dissolves into another of her own.

Panting, Angie rests her forehead weakly against Peggy’s shoulder, temples lightly stippled with sweat. After a moment of silence, she says, “Damn. I’m going to need another shower.”

Peggy chuckles and presses a kiss to Angie’s hairline. “Luckily for you, we have access to one of those." She slips Angie’s robe completely off and toes her own stockings off from where they're now sitting around her ankles. “We even have a bathtub, if you’re feeling adventurous.” 

* * *

There is a child joyfully kicking the side of his sister's chair at the table across the restaurant from the one she and the twins are seated at, and Peggy is quite close to going over there and having a word with the woman paying them absolutely no mind.

She's not entirely sure she should be entitled to such feelings, but she is beyond her usual, limited tolerance for annoyance. With the office in a thorough state over an upcoming mission, Peggy spent the day dealing with grown men behaving with less common sense than the twins currently ignoring her as they devour their meals, likely so they can be done with their evening as quickly as possible.

Besides, she has learned to live with doing nothing about that feeling.

With some effort, Peggy drags her attention back to her own table, and does her best to remove the scowl she can feel pulling at her face. She's not at all certain she succeeds.

"Are you excited about the holidays?" she asks, putting her fork down carefully.

Matched shrugs are all the response she receives.

Elizabeth is slumped in her chair at the end of the table, chin propped on the rim of her glass as she sucks on the straw of her milkshake with a look of practiced apathy. Richard, seated between them, glances at his sister and then at Peggy before offering a simple, "Yeah."

Switching tactics, she asks, "Do you know what you want for Christmas?"

This is the pattern they have fallen into with these dinners. Without Daniel to prompt them into sharing, Peggy is left blindly stabbing at topics of conversation, only to be informed that whatever was "groovy" a month ago is now positively "uncool". It's disconcerting to find herself using interrogation techniques on her own children right now, shifting to open questions instead of those that will only get her yes or no answers and a growing headache born of frustration.

Before anyone answers, Richard starts looking about like an insect is buzzing around his head, the sudden movement startling Peggy partway out of her seat. "Liz, they're playing it," he hisses, slapping Elizabeth's arm repeatedly with the back of his hand.

"Stop it!" Elizabeth complains, but Peggy watches her tilt her head towards the jukebox at the back of the restaurant, bobbing her head along to the music when she finally picks it out from the cacophony of people talking, cutlery clinking and children making altogether too much noise. "I thought this place was going to be totally square."

"You think everything's square," Richard grumbles with a kindness that Peggy has always seen hiding in him. "When's dad going to let you get it? It's been out for forever."

It's not quite the same as their momentary excitement over _Angela Martin_ , but watching them like this is some strange comfort that the way they usually act around Peggy isn't what either of them are actually like.

"He probably has it already for a Christmas present." Elizabeth sends Richard a pointed look. "I told Helen _I_ want it, so you better get me something good to make up for it."

At that, Richard stills, eyes flicking towards Peggy as if only now remembering she's at the table with them, cheeks flaming with embarrassment. "Lizzie, shut up."

A second glance from Elizabeth follows, and Peggy can't hear what she says in reply, but she does catch the way Elizabeth mouths, "Sorry, D."

"Am I missing something?" Peggy asks, because obviously she is with the way Richard is squirming in his seat, the momentary lapse in Elizabeth's guard fully restored.

After a moment of hesitation, Elizabeth giving Peggy a slow, measured look, she answers, "It's, um. The Monkees."

"The who?" Peggy asks, momentarily distracted by the ridiculous name. Having done okay at Howard's ball not too long ago, Peggy thought maybe she hadn't completely lost touch with popular culture.

At Peggy's complete lack of recognition, the twins share a look of incredulity. "The Monkees," they answer together.

"Is that some nickname for The Beatles?" is apparently the wrong thing to say, both of the twins groaning in embarrassment for her.

"Oh my god." Elizabeth's face screws up in disbelief. "I thought you were from England."

"Yes. Well." Peggy scratches at her eyebrow. They’re still looking at her incredulously, and the length of the pause belies an expectancy. It’s a shame her upbringing has never been a favourite topic of hers. "And you like these Monkees, Elizabeth?"

Richard coughs, and Elizabeth rolls her eyes, slumping back in her seat again. "Yeah, they're neat," she answers flatly.

Peggy looks about for witnesses to whatever the bloody hell just happened, because she honestly has no idea. And it makes her wonder what on earth is she going to do with them for an entire weekend the week before Christmas?

Christmas, at least, she knows they both enjoy, having managed to miss only a couple before they were eight. And it does give her an idea, though she knows Elizabeth will call it cheesy.

"You know, I don't think either of you have ever spent a Christmas in the City since you were babies. Perhaps next weekend when you come to stay, you'd both like to go ice skating in Rockefeller Plaza? We could see the tree."

By the time she's finished speaking, Richard's face has fallen and Elizabeth's concentrating on her milkshake again, mumbling something around her straw.

"I'm sorry," Peggy says, leaning forward. "What was that?"

"Lizzie can't ice skate," Richard answers. "That's how she hurt her arm that time."

This is the first Peggy's heard anything about this.

Of course, Richard and Elizabeth do any number of things every day without her knowledge. There are a million different things she doesn't know about both of them, from a questionable interest in these Monkees to whether Richard still sleeps with a night light. This, with monthly dinners where they behave like strangers to one another and visits necessitated only by the absence of their father, is her role in their lives. This is the bed she has made for herself.

And if it had been a serious injury, Daniel would have called her. She knows that.

So it's silly that her hands have curled into fists over something that happened God only knows when.

But it's not the twins that deserve her anger. The world is full of people who deserve her anger, but only one of them is in this restaurant this evening.

"Of course," she says finally, and forces her fingers to uncurl beneath the table.

At a loss, she falls back on her the question she saves for the moment she is truly out of things to ask them. "How are things at school?"

Richard resumes picking at his dinner, having come to recognise the question for what it is, the sign that the evening is almost over. "Fine," he says around of mouthful of fries.

No longer hungry, Peggy pushes her own plate away. "Has your piece been published in the school paper yet, Richard?"

"That was last week," Elizabeth answers for him, voice insolent and cutting, wavering only slightly. "And the play's fine."

"Lizzie. Don't," Richard admonishes quietly, and then for Peggy, "I'm working on another piece. I'll bring you a copy of the other one next weekend."

But Peggy isn’t paying him much attention. Instead she is caught in the hard stare Elizabeth has aimed at her. There is absolutely no question that Elizabeth is Peggy's child from head to toe, and it is only that fact, the momentary pang of recognition in the defiant tone and the distress it poorly concealed, that stops Peggy from reacting.

The twins may not deserve her anger, but Peggy certainly can't deny that she most likely deserves some of theirs.

"How are your grades?" she asks instead, and goes back to glaring at the now shrieking child across the restaurant. 

* * *

There is a cutting wind blowing through the parking lot when they leave the restaurant, the twins tussling through the door as Richard tries to grab Elizabeth's hat, until they spot Helen standing in her matching coat and shoes and gloves by a hideous Rambler Classic. The chrome accents of the car glint faintly in the pale, watery light of the parking lot.

"How was dinner?" she greets them all cheerfully, the twins moving to stand near her, Peggy staying on the sidewalk.

They make quite the picture. Peggy has no difficulty imagining Daniel with them in his sweater vest, the four of them like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The whole thing makes her feel nauseated, standing there alone, just out of reach of the pool of light enshrouding them.

"Dinner was fine," Peggy says when no one else is forthcoming. "Although Richard's chicken was overcooked."

"It was okay," he protests, shuffling a little across the pavement. "Really."

"I'll make you up something when we get home," Helen insists, reaching out and grasping his shoulder warmly. "Did you tell your mother about your next article?"

"Yeah," he says, although he seems unsure if Peggy actually heard him.

"He's going to bring me a copy of his last one," Peggy says, hoping her words aren't undermined by the forced cheer in her voice.

"That's wonderful," Helen says, turning deliberately to Richard. "Your mother's a very intelligent woman, you know, so she probably has all kinds of insights."

"I won't forget to bring it next time."

As if prompted by the mention of time, Helen glances at her watch, reacting as if it has imparted some fantastical piece of news. "My goodness, look at the time. Lizzie, you have homework to do before bed, and Richard, you have to be up for your newspaper meeting."

"Of course," Peggy says. "I don't want to keep you."

"Never, Margaret, dear." Helen presses a hand to Elizabeth's elbow. "Now say good night and get yourselves in the car."

"Bye, mom," Richard offers, and then hovers between Helen and Elizabeth by the car and Peggy on the sidewalk, looking for a moment like he's going to move towards her.

"Yeah, bye," Elizabeth tosses out before Richard's made up his mind. "Come on, Dickie."

He goes with Elizabeth, the two of them scrambling into the back seat together, although he gives her a wave before pulling the door shut with a clunk.

Helen lets out a little sigh, turning towards Peggy. "I know she can be difficult, dear." She says this in what she likely thinks is an empathising tone. "She's just at that age where it can become… difficult to open up. But between school and this new boyfriend…"

Whatever Helen follows up that statement with doesn't reach Peggy's ears. Her daughter doesn't have a _boyfriend_ , her daughter is a child. A child being raised by this woman who Elizabeth clearly doesn't have any _difficulty_ opening up to.

She's honestly having a little trouble breathing, managing a faint, "What?" when Helen blinks at her expectantly.

Rather than answer the question and the look of blank shock on Peggy’s face, Helen waves her away with an airy, "Well, you know how Lizzie can be during her time of the month. She'll grow out of it."

Peggy’s jaw works. She knows she’s gaping like a fish, and she can’t muster up the mental capacity to do anything about it. Through the rear window of the Rambler she can see the back of Elizabeth’s head, tilted towards Richard's as if she were leaning against him.

"Now, the twins will catch the bus into the City on Saturday morning." Her pale eyes flicker towards where Peggy’s nailpolish-red Ferrari is parked a little distance away. "Daniel will give them enough money for a taxi to your apartment, but I think it would be ideal if you were waiting for them when they arrived."

"Of course," Peggy answers without thought, only vaguely listening to Helen’s words. Her eyes are still fixed on Richard and Elizabeth. How far away they look just there across the dimly lit parking lot.

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

 

_December 1964 -- Westchester County, New York_

 

Peggy is late. But really that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone these days.

Peggy is late, and there is nothing new under the sun.

The long hems of her coat swish around her legs as she strides up the steps and into the school building. Her heels clack evenly across the scuffed linoleum floors, echoing down the hallways of lockers and various classrooms. Daniel, knowing the kind of schedule she keeps, had arranged for the meeting as late as he could manage so that she could make it. Even then she’d needed a reminder from Anna, and had to dash off with a well-placed curse on her lips.

Outside the sun is starting to set, its cold wintry light slanting through the windows and the trees. It casts a shadow behind her so that her silhouette lengthens with every step. She mutters, “Room Thirty-Eight. Thirty-Eight...Room Thirty-Eight….” under her breath as she walks, checking above each doorway for a number before moving along. When she finally arrives, she checks her watch again and heaves a little sigh of relief.

Only fifteen minutes late. Not nearly as bad as it could have been.

No sooner had she started to congratulate herself however than she is pushing open the door and stepping inside for her very first Parent-Teacher conference. Normally Daniel handles these sorts of things, but this time he couldn’t make it and had cautiously asked if she could take his place. He’d insisted that if she couldn’t make it, then Helen could. But Peggy isn’t going to just let his girlfriend of less than six months attend where she should rightfully be. Helen may be the girlfriend, but Peggy is still their mother.

“Good evening, Mrs. Wright.” Peggy holds out her hand and approaches the woman seated at the desk near the front of the room with a smile. “I do apologise for being late.”

“Not at all.” Mrs. Wright smiles kindly in return. When she reaches over the desk to shake Peggy’s hand her grasp is warm, but she looks a bit baffled as well. “And you are…Mr. Sousa’s sister?”

“No.” Peggy frowns a bit over the smile still fixed in place, and corrects her, “I’m Peggy Carter. I’m Richard and Elizabeth’s mother.”

At that, Mrs. Wright freezes like a deer in the headlights. She adjusts her thick-rimmed cat-eye glasses, and her fingers shake. “I -! Oh!” She clears her throat and admits almost sheepishly, “Richard told me you had died.”

The smile sticks on Peggy’s face and her cheeks begin to ache around the edges. She doesn’t say anything. What _can_ she say? Instead she just stands there, grip tightening around the strap of her purse until the leather creaks under her white and bloodless knuckles.

After a long, stiff pause, Mrs. Wright gestures to a chair with a nervous cough. “Why don’t you take a seat, and we can begin?”

Peggy drags the chair forward and lowers herself slowly into it. She feels dazed. Shell-shocked. Like it’s 1939, and she’s back in France, and it’s her first time in the field, and bullets are whizzing by her head, and she’s cowering under cover, watching a man just a few paces from her being sucked down into the mud of the Western theatre.

“Now, there are a number of things we ought to discuss while you’re here.” Mrs. Wright laces her fingers and leans her forearms atop the desk. “First and foremost being the fight.”

Peggy just blinks, still a little stunned. “Fight? What fight?”

Her first thought is of Richard. Quiet, gentle-hearted, slow-to-anger Richard, who cried when he found a nest of dead baby birds at the age of six, and carried them inside and demanded his mother do something, do _anything_. That Richard? Her Richard? In a _fight?_

Her Richard, who told his teacher she was dead.

Mrs. Wright’s expression is grave and tinged with something else as well, her scrutiny well over the line of incredulity and into judgment territory. “Your daughter gave a boy a black eye and broke his arm in two places.”

For a moment Peggy’s mouth works but no sound comes out. Then before she can stop herself, she laughs. It’s a short, sharp exhalation, that laugh. Her hand flies to her mouth as if to force the grin from dimpling, or at the very least to hide the fact that she is, in fact, grinning at all. Mrs. Wright stares at her like Peggy’s sprouted a second head.

Of course it was Elizabeth. Peggy should have known immediately. Who else but bellicose little Lizzie, full of righteous fury since she was seven? Just and noble Elizabeth who kicked a zookeeper in the shins repeatedly for being cruel to the elephants back in ‘58.

As it happens, she takes after her mother after all.

“You think this is funny, Mrs. Carter?”

“ _Miss Carter,_ ” Peggy corrects her, and forces the grin down, but her eyes still glint with amusement. “What did the boy do?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Now Peggy fixes her with a hard stare, the kind that makes generals and state officials squirm. “What,” she repeats herself with more emphasis, her voice low and solid, “did the boy do? Elizabeth would not fight people without good reason.”

Lips pursing into a thin line, Mrs. Wright straightens in her chair before answering, “All we know is that he cut off another girl’s braid, though Elizabeth claims he then proceeded to whip the girl violently with it. None of the others present have come forward to back that part of the story. Not even the girl in question, who refuses to speak at all on the matter.”

Silence descends, in which the only noise is the ticking of the clock on the wall overhead, and the creak of a rusty gate leading to a field outside.

“I see.” Peggy plucks at her skirt so that the fabric settles in a smooth line across her knees. She remains perched on the very edge of the seat as she asks, “How are their grades?”

Mrs. Wright stares at her in utter disbelief, “Miss Carter, did you not hear what I said? Your daughter broke a boy’s arm. In two places. ”

When Peggy smiles at her, it’s taut. “I heard you the first time. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. Now, how are Richard and Elizabeth’s grades? Are they doing well in their classes?”

“I think you underestimate the gravity of the situation—” Mrs. Wright begins, but Peggy cuts her off.

“Have the boy’s parents made any complaint against Elizabeth?” Peggy presses, and the tense smile is gone now, “Is Elizabeth being expelled?”

Flustered, Mrs. Wright trips over her words, “Well -- no. The boy has been a _problem child_ for some time, and his parents have been absent. At this point the principal is undecided about what to do with Elizabeth.”

“In that case, keep me and Daniel informed as to the principal’s ultimate decision on the matter. And in the meantime rest assured that we will talk with Elizabeth about controlling her temper in the future.” Here Peggy pauses and allows Mrs. Wright the opportunity to do something other than gape like a fish. When nothing is said, Peggy continues, “Unless my children are doing poorly in their studies or otherwise causing disruptions -- which I highly doubt -- then we have little else to discuss.” Peggy turns her wrist over to check her watch. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I really must be going.”

She stands, the chair scraping back on the floor, and Mrs. Wright starts at the abrupt movement. She seems to wither beneath Peggy’s towering shadow cast across her desk. From the windows at the rear of the room, the sun’s weak rays cant over the horizon and strike Peggy’s shoulders, illuminating her from behind.

“Miss Carter, if you don’t mind me asking.” Mrs. Wright looks like she’s going to rise from her chair, but thinks better of it when she meets Peggy’s gaze. “I’m assuming you work. What is your job?”

“Actually, I do mind.” Peggy fastens the row of buttons on her smart, double-breasted, wine-coloured coat, then smooths her hand down the front. She affords her children’s teacher one last glance, “Good evening, Mrs. Wright.”

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

  
The drive back to Manhattan does nothing to diffuse the roiling in her stomach. For the entire duration of it she twists her hands around the steering wheel, stopping only to change gear, and even that she does jerkily, putting too many revs into each transition.

By the time she’s in the elevator to her floor, she feels like she’s strung up by a coat hanger, barely holding on, ready to slip off the edges at any moment. As always, when she enters the front door her apartment is cold and dark and very much empty. Shutting the door behind behind her, she kicks off her heels, shrugging off her coat and tossing it onto the arm of the couch, where it slips messily onto the cushions. She’ll pick it up tomorrow, she tells herself as she snags a bottle of something brown from the sideboard, taking it into the kitchen to find a glass.

Tossing back two fingers of bourbon, she grimaces and leaves the glass in the sink. As she makes her way towards the bedroom, she rubs at her temples and eyes. The brief oblivion of sleep never sounded as good as it does in that moment.

Something stirs in the darkness of her bedroom, and Peggy freezes in the doorway. It isn’t until the bedside lamp clicks on that she realises Angie has been here all this time, looking sleepy and mussed and confused beneath the sheets. Peggy’s breath catches at the sight, and she finds she can’t move from where she’s rooted in the doorway.

At the sight of Peggy's face, Angie asks, "What's wrong?"

It’s so simple a question, but there’s no way to answer it without giving form and substance to the weight of how badly she's managed to muck everything up.

Before she can stop herself, her lower lip is trembling. She tries biting it to hold it still, but the motion allows a hitching sob to escape her. She turns away from the bedroom, but Angie is out of the bed before Peggy can go anywhere. Some part of Peggy wants to flee down the hallway and back out into the cold night air, but then the warmth of Angie’s hands are on her shoulders, cupping her cheeks, thumbs tracing the bone beneath.

Peggy looks anywhere but at her, head bowed, vision blurring with unshed tears. She’s slipping fast and she can feel it. Clenching her teeth, her hands ball into fists, and she trembles from head to toe in an effort to fight off the inevitable.

It certainly doesn’t help that one of Angie’s hand has moved to brush soothingly through her hair.

"Oh honey," Angie murmurs, tilting her chin up to meet Peggy's gaze. "You can let it out."

It would seem all she needs is permission.

Her chest heaves, and she chokes on the sob that has been lodged in her throat since, if she's being honest, she was standing in that parking lot. Angie rises up on her toes, arms going around Peggy’s neck, and the warmth of her has Peggy swaying forward to chase it.

She’s spent before it’s even begun. When it seems like it’s finally subsiding, she finds she’s wrapped her arms around Angie’s waist and clutched her close. Angie’s nightgown is wet and smudged with mascara.

"What happened?" Angie reaches up to wipe away the makeup from beneath Peggy’s eyes.

Shaking her head, Peggy’s voice is rough. "My daughter hates me, and I think she has good reason to do so."

Angie leans back to look at her face, and Peggy ducks her head to hide the resignation clearly painted there. “You can’t honestly think that.”

In response Peggy manages a little half shrug.

“Look,” Angie sighs, and she stoops so that she looks Peggy in the eye. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him give you a hug. But that doesn’t mean you give up, either.” She gives Peggy a soft smile and says, “Trust me, honey. I know.”

"You tried to hug a horse?" Peggy asks, momentarily distracted by the suggestion.

“It’s a metaphor. Work with me here.”

With a watery huff of laughter, Peggy shakes her head and lets Angie pull her over to the end of the bed, where they sit.

"This isn't gonna work," Angie says immediately, and turns to crawl up to the mountain of pillows she has piled there. "Get up here, please."

Peggy follows, curling up beside Angie beneath the sleep-rumpled blankets, the thud of Angie's heart-beat a steady bruit beneath her ear. Once again Angie’s hands move to her hair, fingers carding through dark curls. She pulls out pins as she goes, and deposits them in a small pile on the bedside table. Closing her eyes, Peggy tries to will herself to sleep.

It's what she's always done, but this time she can’t bring herself to shut her thoughts out like she normally would.

"They've every right to hate me." Beneath her, she can feel Angie twitch with agitation at the words. "I disappear and then force them to put on this charade that everything is perfectly normal between us once a month."

Angie's fingers never cease their motion through her hair. "Can I ask you something?" When Peggy bobs her head, she continues, "Do they know why you don't live with them?"

"Of course not," she snaps, sitting up to look at Angie incredulously. "Why on earth would I ever tell them that I was putting them in danger? They're barely old enough for me to have stopped thinking that's as true as it once was, but just because they might listen if I told them to run away from a man with a gun, doesn't actually make them all that much safer. Why would I frighten them with that knowledge?"

When she's finished, she's kneeling on the mattress, breath coming hard and the sheet from the bed clutched in her fist. Her eyes prick with fresh angry tears.

From her place on the bed, Angie smiles up at her sadly. "Maybe so they can know exactly what a sacrifice you made by staying away."

Peggy feels herself deflate at the words. "It won't make a difference. They think it's because of my job. They just don't know why."

Angie leans across the bed, taking Peggy's hand and dragging her back beneath the blankets. "I think it makes a huge difference. But they're your kids. You should just think about maybe opening up a little to them."

Peggy lies back down, curling her body around Angie's. But she can't let the evening go, something else still niggling at her brain, and she lets the thought rise to the surface, her breath hitching again.

“Do you—” She swallows thickly. Angie's fingers return their combing through her hair, and she lets the motion distract her until the rising wave of renewed tears subsides. "Do you think the— Elizabeth and Richard— that they're afraid of me?"

Angie’s fingers pause momentarily, before resuming their soothing motions. "Is this because of what I said that night?"

She remembers the way Richard stood between them all, not quite able to bring himself closer to her, his shoulders stiffened with indecision and something else, something more visceral. And Elizabeth, refusing to stay silent even as she trembled with that same something.

"No— Yes. I don't know.” Peggy gives a shaky exhale that flutters at Angie’s nightgown. “You weren't wrong."

"I don't know them, Peg. But I know you. If the way you are with them is anything close to the way you are with me, then they couldn't not know how much you care about them."

"I'm not," Peggy sniffs. She knows she must be making even more of a mess of Angie’s nightgown, but she burrows further until the warmth and feel and smell of Angie enshrouds her.

“You’re just being hard on yourself. As usual,” Angie insists. She always was quick to defend her. The irony of which isn’t lost on Peggy in the slightest.

But she isn't being hard on herself, it's just the unvarnished truth. That wall between Peggy and the twins, and everyone else, doesn't stack up between her and Angie. Angie knows too much about her and of her and is too deep inside that it feels like that wall is around both of them.

Peggy lets out a bitter laugh, and it’s muffled by Angie’s nightgown. “I wish,” she mutters.

"I think you took what I was saying the wrong way," Angie says, pressing a quick kiss to the top of Peggy’s head and murmurs into her hair, “But if they were scared of you, at least it's only of the tiny bit of you that you let them see.”

She’s right, of course.

It's not much comfort, one horrible misstep mitigating another, but it's something. And right now she needs something. Something, she can work with, Peggy thinks to herself, next week when—

Shit.

She hasn't even told Angie the kids are coming next weekend.

The thought hits her like a physical blow, and the muscles of her stomach recoil as she inhales sharply. But she does want them to meet. Maybe Angie's encouragement has gone to her head, but this feels like an obvious first step, even if Peggy's of the opinion that first steps should never be quite this big.

Like before, she hesitates, licking her lips before finally saying, “Angie-?”

In response Angie hums a quizzical note.

Steeling herself with a deep breath, Peggy forges on, “Next week the twins are going to be staying here for the weekend. I’d really appreciate it if -”

Here she falters, and her fingers tap a nervous pattern against Angie’s hip. “I mean,” Peggy clears her throat. “If you want to, you’d be more than welcome to...um-”

Angie’s hand clasps her own, stilling Peggy’s fingers. She traces the soft pad of her thumb over the bluffs of Peggy’s knuckles, and Peggy doesn’t dare look her in the face.

“I’d love to meet them, if that’s what you’re implying,” Angie finishes for her.

“Right. Well, good. That’s settled then.”

Peggy tries to sound decisive, but she turns her palm over and squeezes Angie’s hand tight beneath the warm sheets. As she receives a squeeze in return, she feels herself sink into sleep at last. 

* * *

There's a hail of gunfire over Peggy's head, and in the noise she curses wildly as she struggles to retrieve a much-needed grenade from her tactical jacket.

"Bloody hell, Bauer, shoot him already!" Thankfully Agent Bauer actually follows her orders, and she's left with her ears ringing in the sudden silence to shout, "Thank you."

"Yes, ma'am," Agent Bauer replies smartly, head still above the edge of the trench they're sitting in.

Things are, to say the least, not going entirely according to plan.

They were supposed to return home two days ago, but the weather in New Jersey had been entirely disagreeable with that idea.

Peggy can smell her own stench, somehow having managed to work up a sweat despite the fact that it's been snowing on and off for the last two days, and if the cold weren't already making her shoulder ache then it's certainly increasing the throb of pain coming from the fresh bruises around her wrist.

They're less than fifty miles away from Manhattan, and if they have to wait another day Peggy's not going to be home in time to meet the children unless—

An explosion to the north sends a spray of debris everywhere, which is their cue to finally get the hell out of there.

“Still better than writing reports for me, Bauer?” Peggy yells with a smirk.

Bauer gives a rueful shake of his head. “Just barely, ma’am!”

"With any luck, we won't need them much longer, Agent!" And with that she motions for them all to follow her.

In the mad dash across the field they've been camped in, a handful of agents struggling to keep up with the pace she's set, Peggy actually manages a grin at something going right for once. 

* * *

Peggy returns to the apartment after debriefing her staff through the early hours of the morning, mostly cleaned up but still in need of a proper shower, to find Angie still lounging in bed. Even smelling of muck and gun oil, she strips off her external tactical gear before playfully yanking the blankets off and crawling up the bed, making a mess of the sheets as she goes.

"You made it," Angie says, tracing a finger along Peggy's hairline.

“I did.” Peggy starts planting small kisses along Angie’s stomach. She grazes her teeth across the jut of Angie’s hip, and in response Angie’s lips part in a sigh.

Suddenly Angie’s nose wrinkles. “And you need a shower. Badly.”

Peggy grins into the smooth expanse of skin. “You want to join me?”

“Tempting,” she murmurs, tangling her fingers in the snarl of Peggy’s hair and pulling her up to kiss her properly. “But I'm starving and I want to eat before the twins arrive. How about I fix us something up, and by the time you finish, food will be ready?”

With a theatrical sigh, Peggy concedes and rolls off of her, spreading out across the expanse of the bed. “Fine, fine.”

Angie leans over and pulls aside the collar of Peggy’s undershirt to plant one last kiss to her shoulder. “You _did_ remember to shop for groceries, didn’t you?”

"I— did," Peggy answers, watching as Angie climbs out of the bed, stretching in front of the mirror.

“Did you go grocery shopping? Or did Mrs. Fancy have to do it because you forgot?” When Peggy doesn't respond, Angie turns around, catching Peggy staring. "English!"

"Hmm? Oh." Peggy coughs. "Um, yes. The shopping was done."

Angie returns to the bedside, taking a pillow from the pile. "The shopping was done by who?"

Groaning, Peggy hauls herself from the bed and reluctantly makes her way towards the bathroom. “Someone!" she calls out as she goes. "Now I understand those rumours about you on set, Taskmaster Martin.”

Angie throws the pillow after her, but Peggy disappears into the bathroom, snagging the pillow out of the air before closing the door. “That’s _‘Taskmistress!’"_ Angie shouts through the door. "And I can’t believe you read that tabloid garbage!”

Peggy turns the tap and water streams from the showerhead in a hiss. Tossing the rest of her clothes onto the tiled floor, she holds her hand beneath the spray to gauge the temperature, waiting for it to turn just on the edge of scalding before stepping in.

It’s quick--in truth she's glad Angie didn't join her, the bruises down her arm having turned a horrible shade of green. It’s nothing she hasn’t seen before, but Peggy doesn’t like putting her injuries on display. Despite their tenderness, she scrubs herself down furiously until she’s pink and raw.

She has a few hours, and still these few precious minutes in the shower feel too long. It’s time she could be spending preparing for the children’s arrival. She should be double checking that the beds in the spare room have sheets, even if she already checked earlier in the week. The last time the kids were here was almost four years ago; it’s all too easy to forget about little things for them around the apartment when they’re never here. Sixteen year olds probably aren't as easily distracted from dining room tables turned workbenches as twelve year olds.

Not that Peggy knows anything about sixteen year olds, she thinks, leaning against the tiles for a moment.

It seems Angie’s presence in the shower would have done more to soothe her anxieties than anything else.

When she steps out, clouds of steam billow in her wake, making the tall oval mirror over the sink drip with condensation. She’s running a comb through her slicked back hair when she hears Angie call out from the kitchen.

“Hey, Peggy?”

Wrapping a towel around herself, comb in hand, Peggy emerges from the bathroom. “What is it, darling?”

She stops dead in her tracks.

Angie is not alone.

The front door stands ajar, and the twins are standing in the entryway bundles in their warmest winter coats, mouths hanging open in shock, overnight bags hanging slackly from their fingers. Angie is frozen mid stir, hands on a bowl and wooden spoon with all the ingredients for blueberry pancakes spread out on the kitchen countertops. She’s wearing Peggy’s blue silken robe, belted loosely at her waist, and it’s slipped down one shoulder to reveal a line of hickeys the size of the Cook Islands. At the time Angie hadn’t complained, but afterwards she’d grumbled that it would take the make-up artists ages to cover them up.

The twins turn to stare at their mother, and for a moment nobody says a word. Peggy’s standing there just as stupefied, except she’s dripping water all over the floor in nothing but a towel, clutching a comb in one hand, the other gripping the towel tightly around her chest.

Then Peggy breaks the silence.

“ _Shit._ ” She screws her eyes shut, “I thought you were coming in a few hours.”

Richard is still holding his spare key. He shakes his head slowly. He and his sister wear identical expressions, and Peggy can’t recall them ever looking so alike.

“Well.” Peggy clears her throat and shifts her hold on the towel so that it doesn’t fall, “Angie, this is Richard and Elizabeth. Kids, this is -”

“We know who she is,” Elizabeth interrupts. Her voice is hard enough to cut steel.

Where Peggy suppresses a flinch and braces herself for the worst, Angie instead girds herself with smiles. Putting down the bowl, she straightens the robe then moves forward. “It’s wonderful to meet you. Your mother talks about you two a lot.”

It isn’t necessarily a lie.

Angie clasps Elizabeth’s hand warmly between her own, and Peggy can see the way it catches Lizzie off guard. Angie wields niceties like knives. She cuts through social perils with an ease forged from almost two decades of practice. When she moves to Richard, she grasps him cordially by the shoulders and brushes their cheeks together in a bisou. He flushes, eyes even wider than before -- though Peggy would have thought that impossible just a moment ago.

Angie steps back and claps her hands once. “You two must be starving for breakfast, having gotten up so early!” she insists. “Do you like pancakes?”

Dazed, Richard nods, completely under her spell, but Elizabeth’s eyes narrow, and Peggy braces herself against whatever is going to come from her mouth next.

“How long have you been sleeping together?” Elizabeth shoots at Angie, folding her arms, guarded.

“Elizabeth!” Peggy hisses. She tries to put as much venom into it as she can, but currently she’s feeling less than imperious, and all her attempts, unsuccessful as they were, to get the twins to open up to her, even the slightest, suddenly seem hypocritical in the extreme.

Richard looks between Peggy and Angie, suddenly horrified. “Oh, god,” he mutters under his breath.

Rather than falter however, Angie’s smile only broadens, although it’s starting to feel plasticky. With every passing second Angie rapidly evaporates into the ether, leaving behind the smooth, purchaseless Angela, crystalised in place like a pillar of salt. “A month. Only since I arrived in New York for my show.”

Elizabeth seems more taken aback by Angie’s honesty than anything else, but she recovers quickly, wheeling around to glare at Peggy. “But you already knew each other!”

"Oh my god," Richard groans, sinking down onto the nearest seat. "This is…."

Peggy shoots him a sympathetic look, not that he's looking anywhere near her direction, or Angie's either.

“Is this why you left daddy? Because of— For _her?”_ Elizabeth gestures, flapping her hand in Angie’s direction, who shifts uncomfortably on the spot.

 _“What?”_ Stunned, Peggy blinks. “God, no! No, it was never my intention to leave! I only ever wanted to -!”

This isn’t how she wanted them to meet Angie. This isn’t how she wanted to talk to them about why she left. She shouldn’t feel like begging for forgiveness for doing the right thing, but words of penitence claw at her throat.

She takes a step forward, and Elizabeth takes a step back, the bag still dangling from her hand banging loudly against the door. Both of them are staring at her now with new eyes, as if suddenly everything has fallen into place.

Elizabeth shoulders her overnight bag, backing further towards the front door. “I’m leaving.”

At her words, Richard clambers from the chair, grabbing his bag awkwardly as he heads after Elizabeth.

“And going where?” Peggy almost slips on the hardwood floor stippled with water from her hair, but steadies herself with a hand on the back of the living room couch.

“Where do you think?” Elizabeth snaps from the doorway. _“Home.”_

“You can’t stay there by yourselves.” Peggy hates the pleading note in her voice.

“We’re sixteen, mom,” Richard says. He and his sister exchange unreadable looks and shake their heads in unison. They’d always been able to do that, communicate without words. Ever since they were little. Getting them to talk had been a struggle when they were younger, a trait that only ever stuck around her.

Peggy half expects a parting snide remark, but instead they leave quietly. The door clicks shut softly, yet still Peggy flinches as if slapped. Clenching her eyes shut, she sinks down so that she’s sitting on the arm of the couch, towel catching above her knees on damp skin.

Wordlessly she hears Angie begin to putter around the kitchen once more. A pan clacks against the stove, and soon the smell of melted butter and fried batter fills the air. Peggy runs a hand through her tangled hair, then finishes tugging a comb through it. She’s still sitting there in her towel by the time Angie dishes out pancakes.

Angie crosses over to sit beside her on the arm of the couch, bearing two plates. She pushes one plate and a spare set of cutlery into Peggy’s hands. “That could’ve gone better,” she says simply, jamming a piece of pancake into her mouth.

Peggy huffs through her nose, but can’t bring herself to smile. She studies her plate before taking up the cutlery. They eat interrupted only by the scrape of knives over porcelain and the sound of their own chewing in their ears. When they’ve finished Peggy no longer feels like her stomach is trying to drown itself in its own acidity, and Angie’s forced airs have vanished.

“Do you want to go after them?” Angie asks.

Peggy shakes her head. Her hair has started to dry, curling at the edges. “I shouldn’t. It would only make things worse.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please be warned: Graphic violence in this chapter.

_"And I am nothing of a builder_  
_But here I dreamt I was an architect_  
_And I built this balustrade_  
_To keep you home, to keep you safe_  
_From the outside world_  
_But the angles and the corners_  
_Even though my work is unparalleled_  
_They never seemed to meet_  
_This structure fell about our feet_  
_And we were free to go"_

_\- "Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect" by The Decemberists_

 

* * *

 

There's a smear of maple syrup under Peggy's thumb, her skin tacking to the plate as she lifts it, a tiny 'tch' as they separate before she presses back into the mess.

"We should get these soaking," she says absently, the words disappearing into the chasmal silence.

She takes Angie's half-full plate from where it sits on her lap, knife resting across fork, the cutlery scraping against each other as she carries the dishes into the kitchen.

The mess that greets her doesn't seem possible.

All Angie did was make pancakes, for God's sake, what on Earth did she need to use two quarts of milk for and— why is there flour on the window?

The plates make a thoroughly unsatisfying crash as they land in the sink, and the violent, "Fuck!" Peggy lets out doesn't do much to make her feel any better either.

What the bloody hell is she supposed to do to fix this? Beg for forgiveness? Explain to the twins that she didn't leave their father for Angie because she hadn't seen Angie in ten years by then, despite having been desperately in love with her when they'd parted ways?  _Promise that she'll break it off with Angie?_

"What happened—" Angie asks, following Peggy into the kitchen. "Oh. Peg, leave it, I'll get that. Why don't you go get dressed?"

When Angie makes as though to grab a towel and lend a hand, Peggy twitches away, and snaps, "It's fine! I'll handle it!" as she pulls the plate from the sink.

"I made the mess," Angie says, grasping the plate in Peggy's hand, and though her voice is soft there's iron underneath, "I can clean it up."

"Yes," Peggy breathes, releasing the dish carefully, focused completely on the act of uncurling her fingers. "I suppose you can."

"Peg…" Angie starts, prying the plate from Peggy's loosened grip.

But Peggy doesn't want to hear it, doesn't want to hear anything right now, let alone the kind, comforting, vastly understanding words she's sure Angie is just itching to wrap her up in, and she pushes past Angie's hovering form, making her way to the bedroom.

"I'm going to get dressed."

"Come on, I didn't—"

Outside the day has turned cold and bright, the sun glaring off the windows of a neighbouring building to cast harsh slices of light across the bedroom floor and onto the bed. The sheets are still rumpled and filthy from her field gear, and she pulls them off and into a messy heap at the foot of the bed.

The bedside clock reads 9.28— the twins will be almost to the station.

In the drawer of her nightstand is a telephone that only connects to one number. Still wrapped in her towel, Peggy sits on the stripped mattress and activates the connection, listening to the peals of sound in her ear as it rings through, counting their number.

When Anna answers, she doesn't say anything, waiting for Peggy's instructions.

"Mike-Charlie—" The identification code catches in her throat, and she only remembers to pull the receiver away from her mouth halfway through clearing her throat. "Zero-three-two-three. Contact Agent Van Dyne. Tell her to maintain her post, but that home base has changed." The truth of her words makes her pause, and she blinks suddenly blurry eyes against the photos on her bedside table. She finishes with a sharp sigh, "Primary watch is hers."

"Very well," Anna says, her voice giving no hint that Peggy's call was expected, unexpected, or anything in between. "Anything further?"

There isn't anything further, but Peggy feels compelled to say something, explain  _something_  to perhaps the only person in her life who understands the lengths to which she has gone to protect Elizabeth and Richard, and how truly disastrous the consequences have been.

Only she can't find the words, because she cannot comprehend exactly just what happened out there. They were supposed to  _like_  Angie. They were going to have dinner, and the twins were going to like Angie, and see that Peggy couldn't possibly be the monster they imagine her as.

"Peggy," Anna says when the silence has stretched on far too long, Peggy's first name sounding foreign in her mouth. Despite the years shared between them, Peggy is always, without fail,  _Director Carter_. "Things like that never go well. You're not special in that regard."

Perversely, Peggy laughs, just once, feeling very small all of a sudden. "Yes, thank you," she says tersely, hangs up the phone and gives in to the urge to close her eyes completely.

When she opens them again, Angie is leaning in the doorway much like Peggy had done that morning weeks ago, watching Angie take in the photos on the nightstand for the first time. "You do that a lot?"

Hide from the world behind her eyelids? "Not often, no."

It doesn't matter that it isn't what Angie is asking, the answer is still the same. There are myriad things she doesn't do often.

"What does that even mean," Angie asks. "'Primary watch'?"

"It means," Peggy says, voice shifting from merely sharp to too-sharp a tone, "that Daniel or I won't be in the twins' immediate vicinity. That  _someone_  has to be watching them in case— It means—" That someone else has to do her job because Peggy  _can't_. "Twenty foot radius on crowded streets," she recites. "Fifty outside of the City. Fifteen minute perimeter sweeps of the house. The camp counselor Elizabeth hated the summer she was twelve was one of our best young agents. When Richard broke his finger when he was nine, it was a SHIELD doctor that set it."

"That's—" Angie's face somehow reflects the gnarled knot in Peggy's stomach whenever she thinks too much about these things, and she steps across the carpet to sit beside Peggy on the bed, a space carefully left between them. "Peggy, do these people report to you? Tell you what they see and hear?"

"No," she snaps, glaring at Angie sitting there in her robe— Peggy's robe, in fact. She can feel her heartbeat pulsing in her neck. "My god, that is not what this is about."

Beside her, Angie shifts, and the mattress beneath both of them dips. "I'm not sure if I'm glad they don't, or I kinda wished they did."

Something in Angie's tone— so casually dismissive of something Peggy has in fact considered more than once in some of her more miserable moments— sends every instinct Peggy has into overdrive.

She's never really had any sort of flight instinct, and the absolute commitment to fight has saved her more times than she'd care to count. But as she sucks in a breath, an abstract part of her wishes she at the very least had some sense of self-preservation.

"Why?" she very nearly shouts, ignoring the way Angie flinches, "Because I'm so bloody useless I have to use my own agents to know what's going on with my children?"

There aren't a lot of people in the world who wouldn't crumble at having Peggy's anger directed at them, but Angie's never been like a lot of other people when it comes to Peggy. "That's not what I meant," she says guilelessly. "And you know it."

"Did you also not mean to tell my daughter that we're sleeping together?" Peggy asks, levelling a glare at Angie— one that Angie returns with a raised eyebrow.

"We  _are_  sleeping together—"

"And you happily confirmed that for her!" She can't keep her seat any longer, and barely remembers to grab hold of her towel as she stands. "She's sixteen, Angie, not a gossip magazine journalist."

"Okay," Angie says with a very deliberate enunciation, "You're right. I shouldn't have told her that."

But Peggy isn't listening anymore; she's pacing the length of the carpet as the whole ugly scene replays in her mind. "And kissing Richard on the cheeks like that—"

"I was being  _nice_ , Peggy. I was trying to make things go a little more smoothly."

"Yes, well, mission accomplished."

"You know what?" Angie asks, voice suddenly calm. She hitches her robe more tightly closed before rising from the bed. "Because I'm a nice person, I'm going to ignore the fact that you seem hell bent on making this my fault."

Peggy watches, feet now fused to the floor and hands trembling with her truly impotent anger, as Angie pulls some clothes from the dresser drawers. "Where are you going?" she demands.

In the doorway to the bathroom, Angie pauses, fingers gripping the doorframe. "To the rehearsal I was skipping to do this for you," she says, before closing the door between them.

 

* * *

* * *

 

_March 1958 - Ciudad Juárez, Mexico_

Peggy is on the phone with Nuri al-Said when the obnoxiously ticking clock above the door catches her eye, and she realises what time it is. With a flurry of excuses she manages to extricate herself from the call and rush out of her cramped quarters in Juárez. Outside the city is a smeared, warm, wet, spring day, the pavement darkened with rain. While her mind is crowded with the recent events of the United Arab Republic, she steps out onto the road and directly into a water-filled pothole. Her nylon stockings on one leg are soaked all up her calf, and she curses harshly, even as she soldiers on, each alternate step squelching.

At least her final destination isn't  _too_ far off — a brisk walk down a series of winding streets from the safehouse SHIELD provided during her mission abroad to the small office building tucked between a shoe repair shop and a bar. When she enters the building and is being shown into a side room, Peggy checks her wrist for the time. Only two minutes late. A world record, by her standards.

Inside two people are waiting with an astonishingly small stack of forms neatly laid out across the desk; something so serious shouldn't take so little paperwork.

Daniel and the lawyer both glance up at her entrance, and Peggy pretends not to notice when the gentleman — a Mr. J. Aguilar, Esq. — checks his watch in surprise. Daniel doesn't even bother checking his.

Smoothing back an errant curl slicked across her temple, Peggy crosses to the seat beside Daniel, just opposite the lawyer. As she sits, a small patter of water drips from the ends of her hair and trickles down the back of her neck.

Daniel won't meet her eye, and she finds herself cataloguing the differences in his appearance since the last time they met. He needs a haircut, although the grey along his hairline has added a distinguished quality to his appearance that he's never had before. Peggy purchased the shirt he's wearing. His shoes are polished to perfection.

Perhaps if Daniel were to look even glancingly back in Peggy's direction he might notice similar things, but he's steadfastly fixed on the desk before them, and Peggy sighs none too quietly and slumps into her chair.

"Right," Mr. Aguilar says into the silence, and pushes two identical fountain pens across the table at the both of them. "Now that everyone is here shall we begin?"

Both Daniel and Peggy nod silently, pick up a pen, and flip to the first page for signing. It's done almost wholly in silence, but for the sniffling of Mr. Aguilar across the table. At one point he pulls out a handkerchief and blows his nose. Everyone seems to be getting the bug going around this time of year. Apparently it's a nasty one.

Peggy's notably quicker at scratching her signature across each page with a flourish. Then again sometimes it feels like signing documents is half of what she does these days, and she affords the marked lines no patience, each scrawl a messy, botched affair. Like most things in her life.

On the other hand Daniel carefully loops the nib of his pen through each signature so that they all look identical. He has the same intense furrow of concentration between his eyebrows Richard wears when working on a new charcoal sketch. Peggy finds herself studying it out of the corner of her eye as if noticing it for the first time — subsequently her next few signatures have a jagged upward stroke that she doesn't bother letting dry before turning to the next page.

They agreed to do this months ago, but getting a divorce in New York isn't a simple matter of popping into a court house one afternoon. Not unless one of them is willing to let the other lie, and allow an accusation of adultery go unchallenged. Peggy has no qualms about besmirching her reputation, but Daniel remained adamant they not lie. She never thought to suggest they say it had been him.

In the end, Peggy had Anna find them a lawyer in Juárez.

If it just so happens that Peggy also came to oversee the final months of Adolfo Cortines' presidency as the position shifted into new hands — well, Peggy always prided herself on efficiency.

When it's all said and done, Mr. Aguilar leans across the table and scoops up both sets of documents, tapping them carefully into alignment and thumbing through each page to make sure everything is squared away.

"That's it," he announces once he's satisfied. "You're free to go."

The turn of phrase almost makes Peggy laugh.

Daniel starts to rise from his chair, but Peggy says, "What about the matter of the bill?"

"That's already been taken care of." Mr. Aguilar's eyes dart to Daniel.

Incredulous, Peggy sighs, "Daniel, you didn't. You already paid to get to El Paso."

He wards off her look with a shrug, straightening the sleeves of his jacket and picking up his crutch. "You can buy coffee."

Peggy stops herself from rolling her eyes, but only just. They had agreed to keep this amiable, if for nothing else than the children's sake. But she hadn't expected it to be so soon.

She also has to stop herself from checking her watch to see if she has time before her next meeting, left hand clenching under the table as she instinctively turns her wrist. "Oh, alright," she concedes.

She won't begrudge him at least that much.

It's a short hobbling dash to a cafe just down the road, and Daniel hails a waitress for a table for two near the window with his broken Spanish. Sitting there with Daniel — accompanied only by the light patter of rain against the glass, both of them gazing idly out onto the grey-streaked city landscape as they wait for their drinks — Peggy realises it's the first time in what feels like forever that they've spent time with one another sans interruptions.

"You know," Daniel mumbles around his hand where it's propped against his chin, looking at her now as he had refused to back in the office. "I heard you're supposed to feel liberated. But right now I don't feel like one of the lucky ones."

Peggy gives a soft snort, and her mouth curves into the barest suggestion of a wry smile. Someone else might find the words pointed, but Peggy accepts them for what they are. Somehow she doesn't have to answer to agree with him. He understands. They may not have always seen eye to eye, or been particularly good for one another, but the years still stretch between them.

"When did you know?"

Daniel's eyebrows scrunch together at her question before he realises what exactly she means. Before he can answer though, the waitress brings their drinks. They murmur their thanks and pull their coffees close. He thinks for a minute, giving his coffee a contemplative stir, spoon clinking against the mug.

"August 13th, 1957."

She blinks. She hadn't expected so specific a date.

A pause, and then she asks quietly, "Not when I left that night?"

She doesn't need to specify which night. He knows.

The muscles along his jaw bunch as he clenches his teeth, and she recognises the motion for what it is — steeling himself, building walls high enough that Peggy can't peer over and see how wounded he really is.

"No. Not then." He won't meet her eye. Instead he raises the mug to his lips and takes a sip, examining its off-white rim. He speaks and his voice is careful, as if he's afraid it will slip and break.

"You'd been gone for weeks without a word, but then you came back unannounced one night for dinner with the kids. I thought it was an improvement on how things had been. Richard wanted to learn how to cook, so I got a step-ladder for him to watch as I made dinner while you played with Lizzie in the living room. Then you got a call and you spoke on the phone for almost an hour and a half. We were already sitting down for dinner by the time you joined us. You looked so serious — so I cracked a joke. And you didn't smile."

Daniel turns the mug in his hands, balancing the heated edges against his palms. "Seems foolish, doesn't it? But even back in the SSR, when I thought I'd seen you at your lowest point in the filing room, I could crack a joke and you'd smile. All surprised, like — like you weren't expecting to find it funny. And yet right there at home you didn't even acknowledge that I'd said anything." Taking another sip, he pauses. "I know you heard, too. Because I asked for the gravy and you passed it over without batting an eye."

Peggy stares at him, her own coffee mug scalding her hands. Ignoring the heat, her fingers curl and she brings the coffee closer, though she makes no move to drink it.

"Anyway." Daniel shakes his head clear of the memories, and when he finally looks at her it's as though he's been beaten, defeat weighing across his shoulders. "When did you know?"

Clearing her throat, it is Peggy's turn to look away. She chews on her lip as she frowns at the scuffed table.

It's in times like these she wishes she had Daniel's attention to domestic detail. But the truth is she can't pin down any one day or time. It was a slow creeping feeling, knowing their marriage would fail, like vines across an old manor wall, gripping the stone. Until one day she looked up and it was as if it had always been that way. She'd just never noticed until she took a step back.

But he's looking at her expectantly now, waiting for an answer. So she says honestly, "I don't know." Her voice is soft, small, and her frown slowly unknits itself. "When you suggested it — it just seemed like the right thing to do. Getting divorced."

His gaze is earnest. "Do you regret it?"

"No."

There's no hesitation in the way she says it. No sharpness either. Just a hushed certainty. Peggy twists the ring on her finger.

Daniel doesn't flinch or give any other indication of the sureness with which she spoke. Instead his eyes fall to her hands, and he nods at them. "You're still wearing it?"

Forcing herself to stop fiddling with the gold band, Peggy instead returns to gripping the mug of coffee, finally raising it to her lips for that first scalding sip. The muggy air from the nearby rain-lashed window seeps into her shoulder through layers of clothing. "I tried doing without for a day, but it felt strange."

She really should stop wearing it. Especially now.

"I know what you mean." Daniel flexes his left hand, running his thumb over the webbing between fingers. "I only stopped a few weeks ago. Wearing it doesn't market myself the way I'd like."

Peggy's surprised at the pang those words bring, the dull ache right below her sternum. Nearly a year has passed since she decided to move out, and four months since they agreed to get a divorce. She really shouldn't be as taken aback as she is, and that galls her. Almost as much as she is by the fact that — well, there Daniel is, readying himself to move on, whereas Peggy herself had somehow always resigned herself to the thought that this was it.

She couldn't even maintain a remotely successful relationship with her children. Let alone —

And of course Daniel would hope to strike up another romantic relationship with someone. As he should.

Carefully setting her coffee down, Peggy tries keeping her voice light. "Has anyone caught your eye?"

Daniel snorts. "God, no. It's way too early yet. But don't worry." His tone turns dry. "When I do, you'll be the first to know. You'll even get to hear it from me directly, not just through your agents."

Anyone else would have fidgeted or given some sign of chagrin, but Peggy refuses to feel anything akin to shame where her children's safety is concerned. Especially after the events of last year. She wonders when he finally noticed that she'd set regular agents to watching the kids.

The first retort on her lips is waspish, but she swallows it down.  _Cordial_ , she has to remind herself.  _Amicable._

Peggy really is too used to snapping orders and being unquestionably obeyed these days.

So instead she keeps her tone even and says, "I would appreciate that."

She doesn't mention that any future love interest on his part would of course undergo an extensive background check via SHIELD's resources. Then again he probably already knows that.

"I hope you'll do the same for me," he adds, and there's a hint of a question there, as if he's expecting her to say no, as if the possibility she might say yes never even occurred to him. The pale, weak light from the window seems to turn him grey, and suddenly all the years begin to show in the lines near his eyes, the thread of silver creeping at his temples.

"Of course."

And in that moment she  _does_ mean it, even if it's only because she thinks the day will never come when she has to.

If he believes her attempt at sincerity, he doesn't show it. He's heard similar words from her too many times before.

Draining the last of his drink, Daniel sets the mug down. "I should get going to the court house. You finished?" he asks, tapping his finger against her cup.

She isn't. There's only a quarter of the coffee gone, but she nods anyway. "I'm paying, remember?"

He forces a smile at the reprimanding note in her voice, holding up a hand in mock surrender.

Grabbing her bag, Peggy slides from her chair and approaches the counter. When she's finished handing over a few bills and dropping the change haphazardly into her purse — where the coins will surely clink around for months until she upends the whole thing to search for lost keys — Daniel is already leaning on his crutch at the door, waiting.

Slinging the straps of the purse over one shoulder, Peggy joins him there. As he turns to push open the door and leave, he pauses. "Should I get into contact with Anna to schedule the kids' birthday next week?"

Peggy is about to snap back that he can just call  _her_ , but before she can another customer enters, and they have to step aside to make room for the door to swing inwards. The shadow of rain darkens the first few blue-printed tiles at the threshold near their feet.

Clenching her hands in the pockets of her coat, Peggy admits, "That would probably be best."

With a nod and a doleful smile, he's gone, limping away through the downpour.

Bracing herself before being subjected to the elements, Peggy turns up the lapels of her coat and tells herself that it's all for the best. The children are better off living with him. They're better off only exposed to monthly dinners with her. They're better off—

She steps into the rain.

 

* * *

* * *

 

There is more food in the apartment than Peggy has ever had there. But that is for the children and Angie, and not for Peggy, alone, peering into the ice box stacked with tv dinners and frozen pot pies.

Honestly, what Anna must think of her.

Eventually the chilled air creeps through her shirt and pricks at her skin, and Peggy snatches up the ice tray before slamming the door closed.

Angie is still at rehearsal.

And Peggy is—

pouring herself a drink, because she doesn't know what else to do. She's relieved and furious all at the same time, and she wishes Angie would bloody well hurry up and come home and—

The fact that she now thinks of this apartment that's served as little more than an oversized foot locker for her clothes as a  _home_  is why she hopes Angie will stay away, and has her pulling on her coat. The untouched drink makes a heavy sound in the now-empty sink, Peggy having scrubbed it clean once Angie was gone.

The light is fading quickly outside, and Peggy snatches up her keys. She can write up her mission report, get a start on the briefings for Monday— anything would be better than sitting here waiting like some angry housewife. She has her purse slung over her shoulder when the front door is nudged open from outside.

"Oh." Angie closes the door behind her, moving just far enough into the apartment to do so. "You going somewhere?"

She'd wanted Angie to come home, but now that she's there, all of Peggy's instincts scream at her to run away. Instead, she stands politely and nods, "Yes." And then because Angie doesn't do anything but blink at her, Peggy adds, "To the office."

At the words, Angie sinks back against the door, arms folded across herself. "Emergency at 4 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon?"

"There might be," Peggy replies, the casual air of sincerity forced to the point of incredulity.

All it does is make Angie wince. "Peggy—"

But she can't do this right now. "How was rehearsal?"

"It stunk, actually," Angie says matter of factly, shoes dangling from her fingers, "and my feet hurt."

"Yes, well."  _That's what you get for running away_ , she barely manages to swallow back down, it probably not serving her well being mid-flight as she is.

At once, Angie moves away from the door and Peggy takes the opening, moving towards it. "Most likely I'll be late, so don't wait up on my account."

"I'm not leaving a light on," Angie calls out before Peggy can close the door behind her.

* * *

The office is far from empty, but when she arrives the junior agents who hold down the fort on weekends blink with a muted surprise that her presence wouldn't have inspired a month ago. For stupid, petty reasons that she recognises even as she feels it, this makes her angrier, and she slams her office door hard enough that no one bothers her for the rest of the day.

When her phone rings—the phone on her desk that means someone is very specifically calling her about the children or a global catastrophe—the flood of terror it sends through her nearly makes her drop the receiver.

If it were news of a global catastrophe, she would have heard about it before it necessitated someone calling her. And it's still twenty minutes before Agent Van Dyne's scheduled check-in time, which can only mean—

Bracing herself, she answers the phone.

"So I hear you have a girlfriend," Daniel's voice greets her down the line, disarming in a way that feels completely contrary to the adrenaline surging through her system.

"Oh." Peggy could honestly faint from relief that it isn't Agent Van Dyne, before she realises the conversation she's about to have. "I see the children— well."

Of course they called Daniel. They actually  _talk_  to Daniel.

"Yeah, about that. Good thing Helen and I didn't go far, isn't it."

"Oh Daniel," she says sadly. "I didn't mean for it to ruin your weekend."

"What else was I supposed to do? You can't just leave them all alone, Peggy." Her eyebrows raise at the change in his tone, suddenly firm and reprimanding. "They're still just kids."

"I made sure they would be watched over," she snaps, not liking the insinuation. "They're teenagers, nothing was going to happen to them."

"An agent of yours tailing them through the subway isn't the same thing as making sure they aren't losing their minds about some  _stranger_  in their mother's house, Peggy! And if you can't do that, you have to let me know, so I can!" There's a pause, as if Daniel has suddenly realised exactly what he's saying, and Peggy recognises the sound of Daniel weighing his words before speaking again. "They're fine, by the way."

"Yes, I know that, thank you." But there's no longer any fight in her words, letting herself acknowledge that, for better or worse, Daniel's right to know what is happening with his children outweighs her desire to handle things until she can pretend they never happened.

"No, you know they're safe. But they're also fine." On the other side of the line Peggy can hear him shift the receiver. She doesn't need to be there to know that he's jammed it between his ear and shoulder as he crosses his legs. "Being dramatic when their parents reveal they're human, too, is what teenagers do."

"I know," she says softly, hoping the words make it down the phoneline. "Daniel, they were so—" Swallowing past an obstruction in her throat, she forces her hand to relax so that she's no longer strangling the receiver in her hand, and with it comes an admission she's barely allowed herself to acknowledge. "Elizabeth's never going to forgive me. For anything."

"Well, she'd have to know what she's forgiving in the first place, for that to happen."

With an exasperated sigh, Peggy runs a hand through her hair. "You sound like you've been talking to Angie."

There's silence from the phone, and when Daniel finally speaks Peggy can tell he's done chastising her, a note of amusement finally there. "I like the sound of her already."

"I'm not sure she likes the sound of me at the moment," Peggy mutters, thinking of the way Angie had look at her before she stormed off for the office, appearing very small in Peggy's apartment with her bare feet and tired eyes.

"What'd you do, Peggy?"

It's Daniel's knowing suspicion, even after his earlier anger, makes Peggy's spine straighten, indignant. "Why do you assume  _I_  did something?"

"Because I know you," he counters, and she barely restrains an irritated huff. "Let me guess. You were your usual prickly self, and when she didn't read your mind and respond in exactly the way you wanted, you decided it was her you were angry at and off you went."

"Yes, you know how I appreciate having my actions dissected and laid out for me to perform an autopsy on," Peggy snaps back. "Thank you very much."

"So did you tell her to stay and she stupidly did, or to leave and she didn't?"

"Neither," Peggy mumbles, reaching for a pen on her desk distractedly.

"You told her to go and she actually left?" He sighs and there's a noise on the other line that implies he moved the receiver aside to pinch the bridge of his noise. "Peggy, pull your head out of your ass."

"You know I've never been good at talking, Daniel."

"Well you don't exactly make it easy for anyone, Peggy. You're great at talking. Communicating, on the other hand—?" To make his point, he trails off. For a moment he lets the silence hang, and when he speaks again his voice is somber, tinged with a bitter note. "Peg, I wish you'd told me," he says gently. "And not just for the kids' sake."

"I didn't mean to— It just  _happened_ —" Squeezing her eyes shut, Peggy pulls the receiver away from her ear to allow herself room to breathe.

"I know," he assures her, his words issuing faintly from where she's holding the phone aside. "But it would've been nice. And if you wanted I could've told the kids. Smoothed things over with them beforehand."

She brings the receiver closer again, gingerly holding it against her ear so that her exhalation rasps against the rounded edge near her mouth. "I don't want to mess it up this time," she admits, eyes still shut, and she tells herself that Daniel didn't pick up on the small crack in her voice.

"You won't."

She opens her eyes to stare down at her shoes, at the scuff near one sole. "How can you know that?"

When he speaks he sounds wistful, almost a touch envious. "Because this time you actually care."

She doesn't know whether that's better or worse.

"I cared about you, Daniel," Peggy insists, and she has to pause to smooth the tremor from her voice. "I still care."

_Not enough._

He doesn't have to say it; the words hang in a silence that follows.

When he does speak at last, he deflects. "Come for dinner on Christmas Day. And bring Angie."

Peggy scoffs, the corners of her mouth curling upwards in an incredulous grin. "Daniel, don't be ridiculous. The children don't want her there. And they certainly don't want me."

"When was the last time you came over for Christmas?" he asks, knowing full well it was over four years ago. "You want to mend bridges with the kids? This is your chance."

With a grimace, Peggy relents. She pushes away from the desk and turns, ready to hang the phone back on its cradle. "I'll try."

He doesn't ask for more than that. He knows better.

* * *

Angie is true to her word: there's no light on when Peggy returns.

Making her way through the darkened apartment, she manages to convince herself Angie has gone back to her hotel, only to find her tucked into Peggy's bed, a little ball in the center of the mattress. There are fresh sheets on the bed, but the ones Peggy had ripped from the bed earlier remain crumpled on the floor. Angie doesn't move, and Peggy doesn't say anything, ducking into the bathroom.

The conversation with Daniel spurred her this far, but, meeting her own eye in the mirror as she brushes out her hair, she can feel that spark of optimism begin to sputter as her agitation returns.

Angie didn't do anything wrong; her greatest sin was witnessing the reality of Peggy's relationship with her children. And Peggy won't hold that against her. But Angie's rose tinted glasses must surely be in a million pieces across the carpet now, and there's no guarantee that things that have been said will remain true in the cold light of reality.

Peggy's not ready to find out what is true in this reality yet.

Eventually her ablutions are exhausted, having fixed her eyebrows and trimmed her nails, and she shuts off the light before slipping out of the bathroom. Angie has shifted to her side of the mattress, the whites of her eyes glinting in the lights shining through the still-open curtains as Peggy crawls between the sheets, letting the silence engulf them once the blankets have settled around her shoulders.

Beside her, Angie lets out a huff, disturbing the settled covers as she turns over to face Peggy. "So are we just going to lie here and pretend we're sleeping all night?"

"I don't really have any objections to that."

Sitting up abruptly, Angie gropes at the bedside until a dull light filters through the room. "For crying out loud, Peggy—"

"Can we please not do this now?" Peggy groans, fingertips pressed across her eyelids against the light. "What do you want from me, Angie?"

"How about for you to stop acting like it's me you're mad at, when we both know you're mad at yourself."

Behind her fingers, Peggy squeezes her eyes closed and silently wishes she were anywhere else but here, having this conversation. "I don't want to—"

"Well, that's too bad, hun," Angie snaps, crossing her arms so that the sheets tug tight around her waist. "You think I think this is fun?"

"Then why—?"

"Because!" Angie cries, hellbent on not letting Peggy get a word in edgewise. "I'm not going to just let you box me out again." With that Angie flops back against the headboard with a frustrated sigh of her own.

On top of everything else, the reminder that things didn't simply elude her grasp all those year ago bites.

"My ma always said you shouldn't go to bed mad. And she's wrong about basically everything, Peg, but she's been married to my jerk of a father since before you or I were born, so she might actually be right about this one."

Of course the first thing Peggy wants to do is point out that  _they're_ not married, but instead she bites her tongue.

"I'm not going to bed mad," is what she finds herself saying, and she can't keep the surly note from her voice in spite of herself.

"Sure could've fooled me," Angie grumbles, scowling at the lumps her feet make in the sheets.

"No— I." Peggy sighs, and wills the knot of anxiety in her gut to unclench. "I promise. Angie, I'm not mad at you."

"Yeah. Thanks. I already knew that."

"It certainly feels like you're mad at me, though." Peggy doesn't need to be spymaster to realise that.

At that Angie's mouth twists. "I'm not mad. I'm just…." Breathing deeply, Angie props her elbows on her knees and rubs at her eyes with the heel of her hands. When she speaks, her voice is small, muffled through her hands, "I don't want to fight, Peg."

The sharp twist of irritation curdling in her stomach mixes with the urge to reach out and touch Angie, to soothe the agitation clearly written across her shoulders, even if she herself is the cause of it.

Angie keeps her head in her hands, shielding herself from the cold light of the lamp beside her. "I don't know what to say to you right now. There's gotta be something I can say to make you feel better about this, but I don't know what it is, and all I want to do is give you a hug but I'm honestly not sure you'd welcome it right now."

"You don't have to say anything," Peggy says instead of crawling into Angie's lap like she desperately wants to. "There's really nothing to say."

And as she says it, Peggy realises that's all she wants, and has wanted all day; for Angie to say something to make this all seem like it might be okay. Only there isn't anything  _anyone_  could say.

But Angie's somehow still offering the one thing she has, and it has Peggy reaching out to curl her fingers around Angie's wrist.

"It's the thought that counts," she says, Angie lifting her head out of her hands at the touch. "Can we go to sleep now?"

Angie somehow understands that Peggy isn't rejecting the offer. She turns away, and for a moment Peggy thinks she's going to swing her legs over the side of the bed and leave, but Angie only flicks the light off and rolls back over. Yet even as she scoots closer she's hesitant as she wraps her arms around Peggy. It's limp and weak and not at all the way Angie usually hugs her, as if she can't get close enough but she's willing to try.

Instead Angie hugs her as if Peggy were made of glass.

* * *

Her bowl of oatmeal is full when Angie appears in the kitchen the next morning, disheveled and dark smudges beneath her eyes. It's empty before either of them says anything, and then:

"So I was wondering—"

"You know, I was meaning to—"

Peggy laughs, tense and awkward, and when she stops Angie says, "You go first." She takes the seat opposite Peggy, sitting with her hands neatly folded in her lap.

Peggy stares at her, and all she can think is  _Angela_.

It feels like a job interview, or an exam, and one that she hasn't prepared for. But she clears her throat and says, "I thought you might like to come to Christmas dinner with me. With Daniel, and the children."

"I can't," Angie answers carefully. "I have somewhere I have to be, and, Peg, even if I didn't, that's probably a terrible idea."

"It wasn't my idea," Peggy says, truthfully and without thought, before she realises how that sounds. And in that instant she knows without a doubt that whatever test this was, she's utterly failed.

* * *

"You're early."

Daniel's not accusing her of anything, but the words make her flinch, and she darts a look around to see if anyone is watching.

Although why she should care is a bit of a mystery. She doesn't know any of her former neighbours, or their replacements over the years, except as dull profiles and notations in logbooks no one but Peggy will ever read. Certainly none of them know her, and yet the thought that they might see her being kept on the doorstep of her own home is too much, and she pushes past Daniel and into the entryway.

"It's Christmas, Daniel. When was I supposed to arrive?"

"No, it's fine," Daniel replies, relieving her of her bag as she stomps the snow from her shoes. "You're right on time."

Somehow, she suspects that's patently false, and she's proven correct when Richard appears from around the living room doorway, still dressed in his pyjamas and a green and red Santa's Elf hat perched on his head. Behind him Elizabeth stands inside the threshold, clad in pyjamas as well, although missing a sock, and Peggy feels as though she has very much intruded on something she was never invited to.

In truth, she almost didn't come. But as much as it galls her that her first instinct with Angie was to thrash and struggle like a trapped beast, it was even more humiliating to find her flight instinct in fact does exist in the face of her own children. And if her hands trembled for the entire drive up Highway 9, it's probably time to have her car serviced anyway.

"Oh, you're here," Elizabeth says, edging around Richard to make her way towards the stairs. "I'm going to get dressed since the guest has arrived."

Richard scowls at Elizabeth's back, but when he comes over to kiss Peggy's cheek with a quiet, "Merry Christmas, mom," he can't quite meet her eyes. "You are really early, though. I'm going to get dressed."

"Merry Christmas," she replies, frowning at his retreating form. Beneath one arm she shifts the wrapped presents so they don't slip to the floor.

The fact that they're treating her no differently than before, that everything is fine just as Daniel said, gives her pause. Peggy doesn't know what she expected their reactions to be after they'd walked in on her and Angie, but it certainly isn't this.

This is positively  _normal._  Peggy can handle normal.

Beside her, Daniel sighs, following the twins' progress up the stairs. "Just... be patient, if that's even possible."

"Not one of my more sterling qualities," Peggy admits, keeping her tone light and self-deprecating.

"Of which you have many, I'm sure," says Helen, appearing right at that moment in the doorway leading to the dining room, and unlike the others she is perfectly poised as always, wearing a simple yet elegant green dress. Her attention turns to the bottle in Peggy's hand and her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. "Oh, you remembered the wine this time!"

Briefly Peggy thumbs the neck of the bottle, before she forces a smile into place and hands it over to Helen's waiting hands. "I hope it will be suitable."

It had better be. It hadn't been cheap.

Turning the wine over in her grasp, Helen eyes the label and clucks her tongue delicately against the backs of her teeth. "I'm more of a Syrah girl myself. But I suppose a Pinot will have to do."

Peggy's smile freezes in place, and rather than snap back a retort she switches some of the presents to her other arm so that at least she can do more than stand there and take Helen's backhanded pleasantries.

Noticing the motion, Helen points toward the living room. "You can put those under the tree. And Daniel, would you be a dear and grab the silver candlesticks from the attic for me?"

"Of course. Won't be a moment." He pecks Helen on the cheek before heading off upstairs as well.

The thought of being alone with Helen for longer than absolutely necessary is about as appealing as a cup of cold cat vomit, so Peggy walks stiffly into the living room as directed. There a massive Christmas tree scrapes the ceiling, expertly draped all in tinsel and adorned with more baubles than can be counted. Already a heap of presents spill out from beneath its bottom-most branches atop a plush carpet of fake snow that glitters in the light.

For a moment Peggy simply blinks at it all — the sculpted nativity scene atop the mantlepiece on the far side of the room, the red and white stockings pinned over the crackling fire, each embroidered with everyone's names. Helen has even added beside the others a particularly small stocking with the name 'MARGARET' stitched in gold. Peggy wouldn't be surprised if it were stuffed full of coal.

There isn't much room, but Peggy sticks the presents she brought under the tree.

"Margaret," Helen calls out from the kitchen, "would you like a glass of wine?"

Face screwing up in puzzlement, Peggy makes her way toward the kitchen where she leans in the entryway, watching as Helen fishes a corkscrew from one of the drawers. "It's only 3:30."

Pausing with the corkscrew in one hand and the bottle of the wine in the other, Helen shakes her blonde curls as if coming to a sudden realisation, laughing softly. "How silly of me! Here I thought you'd be the type to have a drink at any hour, working in an office environment like that."

"No," Peggy replies, and she can't keep the hard note from her voice. "In fact I discourage drinking in my office whenever possible."

But whatever retort Helen has planned is cut off by the stomping of feet down the stairs as Elizabeth appears, tucking the wooly lip of a turtleneck under her chin. Richard follows closely behind her, his footsteps nimble and nearly inaudible in comparison.

In their presence Helen's demeanor immediately changes. She puts down the wine and corkscrew, and she beams at each of them in turn. "Right! Who wants to help make cookies?"

* * *

With her eyes closed, Daniel and Richard arguing about how best to go about ripping open gift wrap, Elizabeth commentating from her place draped across the ottoman, the smell of turkey still filling the air—

Oh, who is she kidding. It was never like this when this was her home, when that was her family.

But, that wasn't her doing alone, was it? It certainly wasn't like this, her and Daniel and the twins, but it was theirs together.

 _It was when you were actually here_ , Peggy reminds herself miserably, letting the curtain fall back into place to obscure the slush-covered lawn from view. The coffee table has been covered in stray wrapping paper now, discarded from the twins' growing pile of gifts from Helen and Daniel.

Same as always.

"Alright," Daniel says, knocking another present from where it rests out of reach at the base of the tree with his crutch. "This one is from Helen to—" He squints at the tag, and Peggy barely resist the urge to tell him to wear his glasses. "Lizzie!"

Still sprawled across the ottoman, Elizabeth claps her hands together once and holds them out, indicating Daniel should just toss the package to her. Instead he leans across the space between them and gently lobs it at her. She snags it easily from the air and gives it a good shake before tearing through the wrapping paper.

"It's—" Elizabeth stares down at the gift. Standing near the window, Peggy can't see her expression, but she cranes her neck to see what Helen has gotten her. "Um. Thanks?"

Peggy's eyebrows climb incredulously when she sees what it is.

"I saw it at the store and thought of you immediately," Helen insists, ignoring Elizabeth's dubious tone. "It's a  _Relax-A-Cizor!_ "

"Okay…" Elizabeth drawls, eyeing the package in her lap skeptically.

Peggy, now standing directly behind Elizabeth, thinks about climbing across the back of the couch and ripping the present from Elizabeth's hands. How dare Helen imply Elizabeth needs any such device, and that's completely ignoring that Peggy knows exactly what that— that—  _sex aide_  actually does.

Around her, the gifts continue to be doled out by a completely oblivious Daniel, a new pair of boots for Richard, earrings for Helen. And Peggy, standing there uselessly seething, accepts a package of the bed socks that Daniel always gets her because he knows her feet get cold at night.

"Thank you," she says over the noise of Elizabeth tossing paper at Richard's suddenly moping form, and Helen tutting at her to leave her brother alone. Daniel shrugs, offering her a silent smile.

"There's nothing left," Richard pouts, starting to gather his gifts up, until Daniel elbows him gently.

"Siddown," he says, "You haven't opened your mom's presents yet."

One of those looks passes between the twins, filled with doubt and reluctance. Which, to be fair, the last time she bought them something for Christmas they were twelve, and she'd given them a jigsaw puzzle and a set of coloured pencils. She can't blame them this time for turning over her wrapped gifts with uncertainty.

As Richard slowly pulls back the paper, Peggy can see that somehow she's managed to put the wrong tags on the two identical gifts. Beneath the shiny red paper of Elizabeth's gift is the moody faces of some group Peggy had never heard of, while Richard's blinking down at the last copy of  _The Monkees_  in all of the tri-state area.

"Oh wait, they're—"

" _M_ _om_ ," Richard croaks out, while Elizabeth looks up at her with wide, confused eyes.

Clearing her throat, Peggy admits, "I think there's been a bit of a mix up."

"Where did you even get that?" Elizabeth asks, not accusingly, exactly. In fact, if Peggy didn't know all too well, she may even mistake Elizabeth for being impressed.

"From a— a friend," Peggy replies, not about to confess she asked Howard Stark for a favour. "He knows somebody who works at a record store. "

"You were actually listening," Elizabeth says, almost too quiet for Peggy to hear.

"Liz, give your brother his present to open for himself. Dickie…" Helen nods for him to hand over Elizabeth's misplaced present.

As they switch, Peggy watches as the twins exchange the same look from that evening at dinner.

"Who's the Velvet Underground?" Richard asks, with a slightly dulled enthusiasm, but enthusiasm nonetheless. "And Nico? I've never heard of them."

"Oh, um. I have no idea, to be honest," she answers absently, pleased and baffled to have for once managed to do something right in the children's eyes. "Angie suggested it; she says they're going to be very popular."

And just like that, the moment of happy ease is gone.

"What's wrong with you?" Elizabeth shouts, harsh and jarring in the frozen silence. "Why would you talk to her about us?"

Pushing herself from where she's been ensconced all afternoon, Elizabeth nearly slips on a piece of wrapping paper beneath her now-socked foot.

Any answer that Peggy might have given dies on her tongue as Elizabeth shoves Richard's helping hand away, stumbling out of the room. The sound of her feet as she thunders up the stairs tracks her movements, and then there's silence again until Elizabeth's bedroom door slams closed.

The shock at the abrupt turn of events must show on Peggy's face, because Helen sniffs. "Well, I don't know what you expected."

Peggy looks at her sharply. "I beg your pardon?"

Helen lifts her chin, and her gaze flicks up and down, disdainful. "It's bad enough that you've exposed the children to your  _perversities_!" she sneers. "You don't need to rub it in their faces at every opportunity!"

A muscle ticks in Peggy's jaw. It honestly hadn't occurred to her that anyone she knew personally would give this particular damn, and she finds herself shocked into silence.

"Hey, there's no need for that," Daniel tries calming the situation down, glancing between the two of them, but Helen has taken the bit firmly in her mouth.

"Please," Peggy manages tightly, eyes fixed on Helen's agitated scowl. "Don't hold yourself back on my account."

"Well, someone has to be concerned for their well-being!" Helen spits out venomously, glaring at Peggy. "God forbid one of them takes after  _you!"_

"Hey—" Richard shouts, followed by Daniel raising his voice, all the while Helen glares at Peggy with a pitying headshake.

"Alright, that's enough!" Peggy's voice resonates through the room, and they each fall silent, Helen with an affronted look. Peggy stands, and offers up a smile so forced her face hurts. "Thank you for a lovely dinner."

In the silence that follows, Peggy snatches up her handbag from a chair across the room and storms towards the foyer. There she jams her feet into her shoes and stuffs her arms into her jacket before wrenching the front door open. As she leaves, she can hear Helen muttering something high and accusing, followed by Daniel's low mollifying, but Peggy doesn't linger long enough to know exactly what they're saying. She's heard enough.

Outside the wind bites, cutting right through her coat, which flaps open in the breeze before she can yank it shut. She slips on a patch of icy pavement, barely catching herself and swearing loudly. Gripping the edge of her coat with one hand, she fishes for the car keys as she marches onward. She's made it halfway towards her car when she hears the front door open and close behind her.

"I don't want to talk, Daniel!" she shouts over the slough of a fresh flurry of snow through the trees lining the street, rummaging along the bottom of her purse in search for her keys.

"Mom, wait up! Woah—!"

At the sound of Richard's voice followed by a dull thump Peggy whips around. Instinctively her hand has closed around the handle of the Walther PPK in her purse, and she almost pulls it free until she realises what's happened.

Richard is sitting on the pavement where Peggy slipped, wincing and rubbing his back.

" _God_. Are you alright?" Peggy rushes over to his side, intent on pulling him to his feet, but by the time she's near he has already clambered upright.

"I'm fine. Just a bit of black ice. It always forms there." He mutters the latter under his breath, scowling reproachfully down at the walkway.

"Oh, thank goodness." Breathing a sigh of relief, Peggy rakes a hand through her hair. The wind blows it right into her face again the moment she lowers her arm. Seeing the way Richard shivers and clutches his arms around himself, wearing only a thin sweater over his collared shirt, Peggy says, "You should go back inside."

"Hang on. I just—" Richard rubs at his arms and stamps his feet, stuck hastily into untied shoes. "I'm sorry. About all that."

Shaking her head, Peggy frowns. "Darling, you have nothing to be sorry about."

"I know," he says. "But I still feel bad, you know? And this—" he gestures between Peggy and the house behind him. "—It's Christmas; it shouldn't be like this. Everyone angry and storming off. Especially when we were having such a good time."

Peggy shrugs against the cold. "It happens."

"Doesn't mean we have to like it, though. And Lizzie isn't really mad about Angela— _Angie_. Well, I mean, she's  _mad_ , but not how you think."

Peggy can't keep from snorting out a huff of laughter. Sometimes she thinks anger is her daughter's sole emotion.

"And not like Helen, either," Richard continues, almost to himself, before steeling himself and looking Peggy in the eye. As he does, she realises he's taller than her, by a handful of inches now. She'd never noticed. "I heard what she said."

Richard always was more sensitive to the mood of the house, more so than Peggy or even Daniel ever were.

"Some people don't— They just think that…." But she can't bring herself to defend Helen's actions in there, still stinging from their hurt, and the words stick in Peggy's throat. She's not naive, but things have changed since the war, even in the last few years it's changed, and Daniel's not like that. She certainly hadn't expected that in her own home.

"I know, mom," Richard says, as awkward as Peggy feels. "But, Dad said—" Richard scrubs his hand at the back of his neck in a way that is so reminiscent of Daniel it makes Peggy's chest ache. "Well, he mentioned that Angie might come, is all. So we all thought— I mean. We'd hoped—"

"She was busy," Peggy replies, not meeting his eye and instead pulling her car keys out of her bag.

Richard gives her an imploring look that even she can't shrug off.

"It's true!" she insists, exasperated.

"Then," Richard begins, as though he's uncertain if Peggy will answer honestly or at all, "where is she?"

"I—" But Peggy doesn't actually know how to answer that question. "—I don't know."

"Oh."

Peggy can't tell if he believes her. All she can see is his disappointment.

"Thank you, though," Peggy blurts out. In return he ducks his head and offers a weak smile.

They stand there together in the cold without saying a word, neither one of them wanting to walk away, to be the first to break this short glimpse of each other on a wintry Christmas night. Hesitant, Peggy reaches out and lightly grasps Richard's shoulder. In the snow he's warm beneath her hand, and the only thing she wants to do is pull him into a hug. Instead she gives his shoulder a squeeze and — turning away — lets him go.

* * *

Slumping against the apartment door, Peggy takes in the darkened apartment with a depressing sense of deja vu.

The silence is deafening, and she pushes away from the door to switch on the television tucked away in the corner, a blast of sound cutting through the air. Kicking her shoes off with a grateful sigh, Peggy briefly eyes the sideboard before shaking her head and making her way to the couch. There she sprawls out, feet burrowing into the opposite cushion as she pulls a throw blanket from beneath the coffee table and drapes it over herself.

She never kept a throw there until Angie complained about the cold.

With all the focus she can muster, she watches what's airing, less paying attention to it than she is anesthetised by it, letting the noise from the speakers drown out the swirling mix of the day rolling around and around in her head. Eventually the noise blurs to a low staticky murmur as her eyes slip shut, and she fades, drifting along the edge of sleep.

She can't say how much time has passed when the pounding in her head resolves into a low, repetitive knocking at the door. With a jerk she's suddenly wide awake, the harsh glow of the television casts a long shadow across her laid out form on the couch. She hauls herself to her feet, blanket falling to the floor, and her stomach growls at the distant memory of dinner as she makes her way towards the knocking that has begun to grow in its insistency.

Almost without thought, she retrieves her gun from her discarded purse as she passes it, loading the chamber and letting her thumb rest on the safety before she opens the door.

Angie, interrupted mid-knock, flicks her fingers in an awkward wave, and Peggy has half a second to get her thumb off the safety and pull the gun behind her back.

"Hey," Angie says, looking the picture of winter in her coat and scarf and hat. "I wasn't sure you'd be here."

Because they hadn't made plans. Because they didn't go to bed mad, but they didn't wake up the same, either.

Quickly, before Angie can peer around the door and notice, Peggy tucks the gun away in the side table where she usually throws her keys. "Even I can manage a day off for Christmas."

"No," Angie says, and Peggy notices her hands gripping the strap of her purse. "I thought you'd still be in Ossining."

Rather than answer, Peggy steps back, letting Angie in to take in the pathetic scene the apartment must make, blanket on the floor and tv the only light. Peggy hadn't thought to get a Christmas tree, but she suddenly wishes she had, even if it was just for show.

"That didn't…." Further explanation dies in her throat, though. She doesn't want to lie to Angie, but she clutches the day's events to her chest, unwilling to expose them. "It was over early."

With a vague hum, Angie unwinds the scarf from around her head, discarding her remaining outerwear and moving to the couch as Peggy closes the front door behind her. For a moment Peggy is at a loss for what to do, standing in her own apartment, ill-at-ease, until she moves to sit beside Angie, leaving enough space between the two of them that it feels unbreachable.

They sit, both watching the television intently, and it's awkward in a way that Peggy has never felt with Angie. Not since the very end of their time living together in Howard's mansion, when Peggy had been hell bent on keeping that final line between her and Angie in tact, as if it were the only thing keeping Angie safe from everything that Peggy was drowning in every day with their fledgling operation at SHIELD.

Peggy's not even sure how Angie got so close this time, so easily it was like she'd never been on the outside at all, but one thing has become startlingly clear: the only thing that line was protecting Angie from was Peggy, and the only reason it existed was to protect Peggy from herself.

After a long silence, Angie asks abruptly, "What is this?"

"His name is the Grinch, and I believe he is trying to steal Christmas."

"Sounds like my kind of guy," Angie says, eyes fixed on the screen. After a long moment, she inhales noisily and turns sharp eyes on Peggy. "Did you know I was married?"

Peggy pauses before answering carefully, "I did, actually."

"That's almost creepy, given what you do to your kids, but you get a free pass since it was in the papers." Angie crosses her arms, clenching her fingers together for warmth, but doesn't reach for the blanket lying on the ground between them. "He wasn't famous or anything. He owned a bar in Beverly Hills. Lots of celebrities went to be seen by each other but it was a private place. He didn't treat anyone like they were somebody. First night we met, Paul told me that he hated one of my movies, which at the time not a lot of people would've had the cajones to say to my face."

"Charming,"Peggy remarks dryly.

"He was, actually. Everyone thought so. More importantly, my ma thought so." Angie pauses, and with an eyeroll it's as if Angie is breaking character for a moment. "I didn't marry him 'cause I thought so."

Then the character shift is over, and Angie looks small and wan in the flood of light from the television screen, dyeing her skin cold pinks and blues.

When she speaks again her words carry an edge of bitterness. "He hasn't been my husband for longer than we were married, Peggy, but nobody in that house seems to give a damn, because it's the only thing I ever did that they do give a damn about. That's where I was today; at my parents' place."

"Angie, you could have told me. I would have—"

"What? You would have what? Come with me? Held my hand under the table while everyone asked me about my poor ex-husband stuck out in California?" Angie snorts gracelessly at the thought.

At a complete loss for what to say, Peggy whispers, "I— I'm sorry."

With a sigh, Angie shakes her head and turns to address the television screen rather than Peggy. "You really don't get it, do you?"

"I don't understand."

"I don't need you to apologise for being who you are. I spent enough time doing that with my family to know it only ends in resentment." Angie tucks her feet up beneath her legs so that she's curled up on the other end of the couch, and across that short space she appears more distant than Peggy has ever known her. "They don't like the person I choose to be, and that's fine because I choose to be that person. I'm not sure you ever decided to be this person who ignores her children. I think you chose to be this amazing person who's literally trying to save the world, and forgot to let them know they were the reason for it all."

Peggy opens her mouth to respond, but the words die in her throat. Instead she swallows down whatever defensive reply was on the tip of her tongue, and remains silent.

There's a commercial for dish soap on when Angie turns toward Peggy and says, "If it had been me with a couple of kids waiting at home for you, would you have done anything different?"

"Well for one, we couldn't have a couple of—" Peggy cuts herself off. "Angie, how can you ask me that?"

"I just want to know, do you think you would have stayed and fought harder to make it all work, if it had been me instead of Daniel?"

It's an interesting question, and one she doesn't have an answer to. Or one she doesn't want to look too closely at. "I honestly don't know," she says, the words tasting like sawdust in her mouth.

"I think you do," Angie says, eyes imploring, but then she turns her attention back to the television. "But I also think you're expecting the same outcome all over again now."

In silence, they watch as the Grinch's heart grows three sizes.

"I know we haven't talked about this," Angie finally says, serious and fragile. "I've been afraid to ask, because I wasn't sure if you knew. But do you even know if you want this?"

"Of course," replies Peggy, immediate in her certainty.

"No, I'm serious, Peggy. I know this,  _us_ , it's brand new. But do you want some vague idea of us existing in that hotel room alone together, or do you want  _this_? You and me? With all my mess and your mess and your  _kids_  and…" Angie trails off, tossing her hands up in tired futility. "When you wrote me that letter, you said 'I've wanted this for as long as I've known you.' I probably should have asked what you thought  _this_  was, because you were on your way out the door even then."

Angie stands then, and retrieves her discarded winter wear one item at a time. Then, fixing her gloves by the door, she turns to face Peggy.

"Angie…." Peggy rises from her seat, only to stand frozen, caught between the desire to do  _something_ to stop Angie from leaving with the impression that she doesn't give a damn — an idea she's obviously gotten from somewhere — and an overwhelming fear of throwing herself into something she isn't at all certain she can handle.

It isn't every day she finds out that at heart she really is a coward.

"I don't want an answer right now. Because you don't know." Angie fusses with her hat, presenting herself to Peggy once she's satisfied. "I know what I want, Peggy. Call me when you do."

After the door clicks closed, and the television is switched off, there's a chill and silence in the air that Peggy can't shake. Outside snow continues to fall, blanketing the city in a dull, icy hush. In the hope of warding it off, Peggy crawls into a bed where she can no longer smell Angie on her sheets.

In the spaces where they had once fallen so easily together, Peggy realises she and Angie are very much strangers to one another. Enamored strangers — even as she lies in bed alone, she longs to be near her — but strangers nonetheless.

As she drifts towards sleep, Peggy wonders if Angie is still saying prayers for her.

* * *

 

Punching someone in the face has never felt so satisfying. Although in retrospect Peggy may have hit them too hard. The additional jabs to their kidneys, the dislocating of their right knee, and the swift but brutal side kick to the chest may have also been a bit over the top.

But it felt  _damn_   _good._

Three of Peggy's own agents stand behind her in full tactical gear, staring at the HYDRA agent passed out on the ground. All of them have seen her train before — some have even been brave enough to test themselves against her in the ring on occasion — but here in a HYDRA facility east of Swakopmund in Namibia is something altogether different.

"Bauer, help me hide the body." Peggy manages to snap even while keeping her voice low. "Van Dyne, Nguyen — watch our exits."

They move forward as instructed. Bauer leans down to pick up the HYDRA agent's legs, and together he and Peggy haul the unconscious body into a nearby closet full of office supplies. When Bauer turns too quickly to exit the closet, the submachine gun slung over his shoulder catches on a rack of paper, flinging it noisily to the ground.

Peggy glares at him, and even beneath the black fabric of his half-mask Bauer looks sheepish. He goes on to shut the closet door with exaggerated slowness — less out of sarcasm and more out of genuine concern for his own personal safety.

They have a helicopter waiting for them once they manage to infiltrate the base and get the information they need, but if things keep up the way they are going, they might not make it. Peggy will eat crow before that happens. If there is one area of her life she can control and excel at, it's work. Even if it means dealing with Bauer's two left feet.

The number one objective for this mission is stealth. In and out in under two hours. There had been very little time between recognising their opportunity to act and heading out, and Peggy hadn't been home in days even then. Their team's mobilisation had been nothing short of frantic in the wake of new intel, and Peggy only hopes that protocol was followed upon her departure.

Even as the thought of Angie back in New York and having not heard from Peggy rises in her mind, she forces it back before she can be distracted by how very much she wishes things hadn't ended the way they did.

Flipping her wrist over to check her watch, Peggy motions for the others to follow her lead. She peeks out into a hallway to make sure it's clear before quickly and quietly moving to their target. Before they can reach it however, heavy footfalls announce more arriving around the corner. Three or four by the sounds of it.

Peggy wrenches open a door to her left, and she and all her agents pile into the world's smallest, mustiest utility room. Janet barely has enough time to whip the door shut with a near inaudible click when they hear voices and footsteps outside.

As they wait for the HYDRA personnel to pass, Peggy keeps her breathing even while trying not to think about the ironing board jammed into the small of her back and Agent Nguyen's elbow pressing into her gut. While she has been to some truly shabby places in her time, this particular HYDRA base is slowly working its way into her top ten list.

Some small part of her finds it incredibly ironic that this is probably the most domestically themed room she's been in all week. A HYDRA agent's socks are hanging to dry near Bauer's head. Based on his expression, they haven't been very well cleaned either.

At last Janet signals that it's all clear, and the four of them extricate themselves from the utility room as carefully as they can so as to not make excess noise. This time Van Dyne leads them further down the hallway until they reach the last door on the right.

Peggy has to hold back a sigh when Janet holds up two fingers to indicate the number of HYDRA personnel inside. Instead she gives a curt nod, moving forward to stand beside Agent Van Dyne, and everyone readies themselves.

Slipping inside the room, Peggy is hit with a wave of heat and the whir of computers. Two people stand with their backs to the door, one of them leaning over to study the circuitry behind a peeled back panel. They are murmuring to one another, their voices growing louder as Peggy creeps closer, Agent Van Dyne hot on her heels.

The sole of Peggy's boot slips uncertainly on a thick tangle of wires coiled along the ground, and even though she catches her balance before she can make an absolute fool of herself, the leather squeaks beneath her toes.

One of the HYDRA personnel glances over, then does a double take, his eyes widening. He barely has enough time to nudge his companion on the shoulder before Peggy and Janet are upon them.

It takes only a few moments until the two HYDRA personnel are sprawled flat on their backs. Peggy may have enjoyed it a little too much.

Agent Nguyen brings up the rear, keeping a lookout in case anyone else approaches, while Janet trains her submachine gun on the limp bodies of the two HYDRA personnel in case they should wake up and cause a fuss.

"Bauer," Peggy hisses, waving him forward, her movements short and jerky.

"I'm on it," he whispers back. He steps over the bodies of the HYDRA employees as he makes his way across the room to mutter and fiddle with the electronics.

Out of necessity, Peggy can handle an assortment of devices. In a pinch she can develop film, replace a flat tyre on her car, disassemble and reassemble any gun that happens to be stuck under her nose, even diffuse a bomb should the occasion call for it — though that is entirely dependant upon the type of bomb in question. But tricky electronics and frilly computers she leaves to Howard. Or in this case — Bauer.

Standing around and playing with the strap of the submachine gun slung over one shoulder, Peggy does her best to not hover but fails miserably. Her presence can't help speed up whatever process Agent Bauer is currently entrenched in, but then again delegating has never been Peggy's forte.

"Ma'am," Bauer glances over his shoulder nervously. "Could you….not do that? Please?"

With a barely concealed huff Peggy takes a step back. Not that it seems to help Bauer relax in any way; he remains as tense as ever while typing and squinting at lines of green text across the black screen. Instead of loom near either of her other two agents, Peggy decides to pace. She rocks from heel to toe, her steps punctuated every so often with a pointed sigh at the ceiling.

Eventually even that isn't enough and she mutters, "Come on, Agent Bauer, my daughter could get in and out of this facility faster."

"With all due respect, Ma'am," Agent Van Dyne says from where she's still pointing her gun at the unconscious HYDRA employees. "Your daughter  _does_ take after you."

Peggy doesn't know whether she should feel pleased or irritated at that comment.

"Got it!" Bauer exclaims softly, holding aloft a flat bit of plastic like it's a marathon torch.

Immediately Peggy checks her watch. They have exactly twenty two minutes to spare before their extraction helicopter expects them. It should be plenty of time.

"Nguyen, take the lead," Peggy issues commands crisply, already moving towards the exit. "Van Dyne, bring up the rear. Don't celebrate, Bauer, we're not out of this hellhole yet."

Even as Bauer schools his expression into something sterner and more appropriate for their circumstances, Peggy can't help but feel that old flush of triumph sweeping through her stomach. As the four of them proceed to sneak back out of the base, she tries to tamp the exaltation down, but somehow it still flutters in her chest.

And quietly, in the back of her mind, she's relieved that when she told Howard that they were close this time, it had turned out to be true. That she hadn't been tilting at windmills again. That soon enough it would be safe, in a way she'd been striving for since the very day they declared SHIELD active.

The location of every single last HYDRA base — contained on a device that fits into Agent Bauer's back pocket. If Peggy thought she was closing in on HYDRA weeks before, it's nothing to where she is now. From here the end is in sight. Back at SHIELD headquarters she can initiate the swift extermination of every HYDRA base on the face of the planet. Even if HYDRA lashes out in a blind panic, she can foil them at every turn, at last a step ahead.

In many areas of her life Peggy expects to stumble, but here and now she's reminded of how much she likes to  _win._

* * *

 

When everything is over, down to the last report in its file on the desk in front of Peggy, all she wants is Angie, and god, what an absolute idiot she is, because Angie doesn't even know that.

* * *

In retrospect, showing up without any plan of attack is completely mad. Peggy never does anything without some kind of plan, even if it is known only to herself.

Which perhaps explains the mess she's gotten herself into now: standing in Angie's dressing room on the opening night of her show instead of sitting in the audience front and centre. At least she's kept her promise.

Daniel was right, though. She is hopeless when it comes to saying the things she means. But she always means the things she says. She only hopes she's not too late to say them.

Standing amongst Angie's things, Peggy is viscerally aware of all the small signs of Angie's absence in her life over the last week or so. The hastily discarded shoes lying near the door. The camel hair coat flung over the back of the chair in front of the large stage mirror. All the outfits Angie has to change into for various scenes jostling against one another on a rack.

Just like last time, she wants to touch everything. Instead, Peggy remains in the centre of the room, hands jammed into her pockets. It isn't her place to be so presumptuous.

She shouldn't be as surprised as she is when the voices sound loudly just outside the shut door. The thunderous applause that usually heralds Angela Martin's approach after a performance is alarmingly lacking. Before Peggy can fully collect herself, the conversation in the hallway outside spills into the room as Angie and her assistant barrel through the door.

"I said no, Jeremy." Frustration laces Angie's words, and she's rubbing at her eyes, not caring that she's smearing the stage makeup there.

He trails after her, incredulous. "You still intend to stay in New York? After  _that_ reception?"

"I'm not leaving after a single night."

"Don't lie and try telling me you're not saying that because of—" Whatever Jeremy had been about to say however, Peggy will never know.

Angie stops dead in her tracks, and Jeremy almost runs right into the back of her. Still scowling, he turns his glare to Peggy, as if she is the source of all his headaches. With an irritated sigh, he shakes his head and turns to leave. "Don't be too long. You already have journalists swarming outside like damn sharks."

The door clicks firmly shut behind him with finality, leaving Angie and Peggy alone in a room for the first time in almost a week. Despite the frown, and whatever else happened out there, Angie is radiant in her trench coat and damp hair.

For a moment they stare at one another, silent. Then Angie brushes by Peggy to get at the vanity, where she snatches up a swab of cotton and a bottle, and begins wiping the ruined makeup from her face. "Took you long enough." Angie eyes her through the mirror. "But at least it wasn't nearly 20 years this time."

Peggy flinches at the words, and the resignation there. It's a tone Peggy is all too familiar with from other sources, and one she's never expected to hear coming from Angie.

"I wanted to see you," Peggy answers honestly.

Throwing the stained cotton aside, Angie grabs another swab. In the mirror her eyes flick briefly back to Peggy. "Is that all you wanted to do?"

" _No_ ," Peggy says, and some of her frustration—namely at herself—finally shows. "That's not all I want, Angie, and I thought you knew that. I thought you understood."

"Peg, you're going to have to spell it out for me, because I can't actually read your mind. No one can."

"I—" Sighing roughly, Peggy finds herself studying her shoes before bracing herself and looking Angie's reflection in the eye. "I'm sorry it took me so long. We had a— a situation, you might say. Angie, we made a breakthrough, and I—

But anything Peggy was about to say in order to disavow herself for being late, for missing the show, for finally speaking up when she should have long ago, is cut off by the squeak of Angie's chair as she swivels around. She pins Peggy with a hard, disbelieving look. "I never wanted your  _apology_ , Peggy. That isn't what this is about."

"I don't know what you want me to say!" Peggy flings her hands up in frustration. "I wanted to be here, but I want to do a lot of things I can't, and wishing for them never helped anybody!"

Angie shrugs, tossing the last cotton swab in the trash by her feet, her face clean, looking remarkably bare above the stage costume she's still wearing. "Maybe. But people still like to hear it."

"Hear my—what? My  _wishes?"_  Peggy's face screws up in bewilderment. "What good would it do? Knowing that I wish HYDRA was nothing more than a bad dream? That I wish I could speak to my children without the fear or knowledge they hate me? That I wish Steve Rogers had given me his bloody coordinates so I could find him? That I wish I'd made something of us — you and me — twenty years ago, but couldn't stand the thought of losing you too?"

Somewhere along the way, she's begun to pace, her voice rising until it fills up the room. "There's no substance in that. And I refuse to go about life regretting choices I made for perfectly valid reasons. It's not twenty years ago. It's here and now. And now the thought of letting you slip through my fingers again is—" Peggy's teeth clench shut and she comes to a halt near the centre of the room, standing a few steps away from Angie, who's following Peggy's movements with her eyes, silent.

"Things have changed. We've changed. But I want this." Peggy gestures between the two of them. "I just—I don't know what to say to make you believe me."

From her place on the chair, Angie watches her, legs crossed neatly at the ankle, hands folded in her lap. "The problem wasn't that I didn't believe you. The problem was that you never told me until just now." Rising to her feet, the pleats in Angie's skirt make the fabric sway at her knees. "All I needed to hear was that you wanted this too."

It can't be that simple, although thinking of the flood of insecurities she's just let loose as simple makes her dizzy. "But I told you I love you."

"Yeah, after I practically twisted your arm. But—" Angie pauses, suddenly very still, as if searching for her courage. Or her faith. "I think I always knew that. Even back then."

"I did. I  _do_." Peggy's hand twitch, almost reaching to to take Angie's hands. "Angie, everything I've ever done was to keep you safe, because I couldn't bear the thought of anything happening to you. And Richard and Elizabeth, too. I'd rather you all be safe somewhere else than with me and in danger."

"And that's a really nice thing, Peggy." Angie takes a step forward, reaching out to touch the back of Peggy's hand. "You should let people know so they don't just feel like they're being shoved in a box to be forgotten."

She feels the words like a physical blow, and the thought that Angie felt that way for even a second fills her with shame. But, she reminds herself, it doesn't have to be that way.

She doesn't want it to be that way.

Finally, Peggy lets herself take Angie's hand, fingers aligning before she threads her fingers between Angie's and closes hers around them. "I  _never_  forgot you."

"I know that," Angie says, head tilting to hide an almost shy grin. Almost. "Now."

Peggy lets herself feel the weight of Angie's hand in her own, the faintest flicker beneath the skin proof that Angie is right there, and if Peggy wants it, will be for some time to come.

"I'm sorry I missed this— No." Peggy sucks in a breath. "I  _wish_  I'd been here."

Angie chuckles, the sound a little soggy, as she lets herself grin up at Peggy. "I'm kinda glad you weren't."

"Why? Actually, thank you for the reminder, what was that what's-his-name talking about; did it go badly?"

"Oh my god," Angie laughs, covering her mouth as if her laughter is inappropriate. "English, it was a disaster."

"Do you have to go and— what was it? Talk to the press?"

"Nah," Angie says, hand waving dismissively. "Let them talk crap amongst themselves." Biting her lip, Angie looks up from beneath her eyelashes. "Do you think you could smuggle me out of here?"

"Absolutely." Peggy says, letting them slip into an easy banter that she's missed terribly. "Where shall we go?"

"I was thinking maybe we could just go home."

And Peggy knows she doesn't mean back to her hotel.

Angie gathers up her things, drapes a coat around herself and tucks a winter hat over her hair. Before Peggy opens the door to peek around for an escape route, Angie grabs a hold of her hand again, tugging her into taking a step closer. "Hey."

Angie's nearness, after its loss, is exhilarating. Rather than struggle for words, she leans down, and kisses Angie with a certainty that couldn't be mistaken for anything else.

* * *

 

For as long as she can, Angie hides away from the press, reluctant to face the reporters' enthusiasm for vitriol without being able to do anything but grin and bear it. But the newfound solace barely lasts a day and a half before Angie sighs and dresses herself up to attend the witch-burning.

"You'd think there was nothing else in the world going on interesting enough to report," Angie mutters, half to herself, as she fumbles with the clasp of a golden necklace from her place in front of Peggy's mirror.

Coming to stand behind her, Peggy takes the necklace from Angie's hands and fastens it for her. "If that were the case, I wouldn't be doing my job properly," Peggy says. When she finishes, she dips her head to kiss Angie's bare neck above the fine gown.

In response, Angie hums and tilts her head to the side, allowing Peggy more room. "Yeah. Stop being so efficient. Makes it tough for us poor lay people."

Peggy snorts, then nips at the skin of Angie's shoulder. "I'll get right on that."

When she opens her mouth to gently suck, slipping one hand down Angie's side to toy with the zipper there, Angie groans but shrugs her away. "If you do that, I  _will_ be late, and I  _will_ grump about bruises."

"Oh, all right," Peggy sighs and stops, though Angie lets her hands remain on her hips when she turns in Peggy's arms.

"Trust me." Angie reaches up to drape her forearms over Peggy's shoulders. "I'd much rather stay holed up in here with you. But we both have to face the music at some point."

Of course she's right.

Rather than admit that however, Peggy huffs and turns her head to nuzzle at the sensitive skin at the crook of Angie's elbow. She can't help it, and has barely been able to let Angie from her sight since they fled the theatre. Peggy refuses to deny herself, or Angie for that matter, any longer, even if it's something as basic as the feel of Angie's skin against her own for a moment.

And Angie indulges her for a moment, scratching along the line of Peggy neck, before she snatches her arms back with a squeak and fixes Peggy with a glare, crossing her arms with faux severity. "You're a troublemaker, Margaret Carter."

At that Peggy makes a face. "Don't call me that. You sound like Helen."

"Serves you right." Angie wags a finger and turns to head out of the room. As she does she she snags her cashmere shawl from where it hangs over the door. "Remember," she shoots over her shoulder as Peggy follows her into the apartment's living room. "I want to be there later. I really need a proper introduction to the kids if we want to do this right."

"I remember." Peggy leans against the back of the couch, watching Angie step into her shoes and shrug into her coat. "How long will you be?"

Outside the sky is beginning to dim with snow and twilight. Angie tugs on a pair of gloves for good measure. "An hour? Probably less. My manager will want to keep the public flagellation short and sweet."

"Try not to enjoy yourself too much," Peggy replies dryly.

Looking entirely elegant with her pristine outfit and dusky eyeshadow and coiffed hair, Angie sticks out her tongue at Peggy. Then — in spite of the encroaching evening — she settles her round sunglasses into place and leaves.

Peggy is still smiling softly to herself when the door shuts behind Angie, leaving her alone in the apartment. For longer than she'd like to admit Peggy remains there, until finally she gathers herself up and pushes away from the couch. She is dressed for the day, casual slacks and a button down shirt, but the socks Daniel gave her for Christmas whisper against the polished floorboards as she crosses to the phone at her dining table turned office desk.

She studies the phone as though it's an adder coiled beside the stacks of paperwork, then with a deep breath she picks up the receiver and dials one of the few numbers she knows by heart.

Yet another thing she's put off because of her work. Still she won't deny that the success of the last few days—entire networks falling as her agents spread across the globe—has bolstered her desire to right as many wrongs as she can.

The dial tone drones in her ear until the call is answered with a click.

"Hello?"

"Daniel. It's me." And she's relieved it was him to answer the phone.

"Oh!" In the background Peggy can hear the distant murmur of Richard's voice, followed by a sharper sounding rebuke from Helen. "I was going to call you later this week actually," Daniel admits, and the voices in the back fade as he moves around the corner where the cord can just stretch around the door into the kitchen.

His surprise isn't itself unanticipated — it's not often Peggy is the first to reach out after things have gone poorly.

"Look, Christmas didn't end well and I—" Daniel starts to say, but Peggy cuts him short.

"That's why I'm calling actually. Among other things." Through the window she can see the first lights of the city bloom, watery and yellow against the snowy pavement and frost-gripped buildings. "Can I speak with the kids?"

Over the line she can hear him shift, as if he's peering over his shoulder into the living room from his vantage point in the kitchen. "They're a bit busy at the moment. Or—hang on, Elizabeth might."

He's about to call out to Elizabeth, when Peggy interrupts quickly, "No! That's not what I—" Face scrunching up into a grimace, Peggy knocks the receiver lightly against her temple before saying, "Daniel, I want to see them. Tonight. Please, I just—"

Whatever composed request she had originally constructed in her head before calling has fled. Now Peggy's stomach ties itself into knots. Asking to see her children for a few hours shouldn't be so bloody difficult, yet here Peggy is, chewing at her bottom lip and nervously shifting her feet.

In the end she finishes with a weary, " _Please_."

Even to her own ears she hates how imploring she sounds, how vulnerable.

There's an incredulous pause down the line, then finally Daniel says softly, "Peg, I would never keep you from the kids. The only one who does that is you."

Peggy always did have a knack for surrounding herself with people who were too perceptive.

"When—?" She clears a burr from her throat, and presses on. "What time suits best?"

"Let's see." Daniel's voice grows briefly distant as he cranes his neck to see the clock behind him. "I can take Helen out to dinner, and you could come over here while we're away. That should give you a few hours alone with them."

"I'm bringing Angie with me," Peggy adds hastily, knowing that not telling him would be far worse.

"Oh?" She doesn't have to see him to know he's wearing that amused smile of his. "You two finally manage to communicate?"

Peggy rolls her eyes at his tone. "Something like that."

"Good for you." He isn't being sarcastic, though the grin is still there in his voice, the one that always eventually drives her to exasperation. "Helen and I will leave in about two hours, if you want to arrive just after us to avoid any drama."

Peggy can't keep the huff of laughter at bay. "Thank you."

Angie and Helen being in the same space would not bode well. The small part of Peggy that found a thrill in chaos almost wanted to see that confrontation—but not tonight.

"I'll let the kids know you're coming." He pauses, then says, "Ring me back if plans change."

"They won't," Peggy assures him with as much firmness as she can muster.

In response he only hums, a tired sound, as if he's heard every excuse under the sun—which of course he has—before he hangs up.

Exhaling, Peggy closes her eyes. That step over, relief unspools the twist in her stomach somewhat, but it still feels like she's swallowed a stone. Now she has to actually speak to Richard and Elizabeth. Placing the receiver back on it's cradle, suddenly Peggy wishes that she had done more to prepare herself—that she had rehearsed exactly what to say, that she had better clothes to wear.

It's absurd really, the desire to dress up for her own children as though she's meeting state officials. She knows it's silly, but the feeling is so acute that a moment later Peggy finds herself pawing through her closet. Tossing various outfits across her bed, she deliberates over the choices. She's holding up a rich purple dress to her body while cocking her head at her reflection in the vanity mirror, when she hears the front door open and close.

"I'm back!" Angie calls out from the other room. Her approach is preceded by the clack of her heels over the hardwood floors, and when she enters the bedroom she slumps against the doorframe, drained.

"How did it go?" Peggy asks, turning to frown at a different angle of herself in the mirror.

In answer, Angie heaves a loud sigh and sags in the doorframe. "Pretty sure I've seen bullfights with less bloodsport," she groans before straightening. "And that colour is too severe on you. Go for the coral and navy."

"Cheers." Peggy discards the current outfit and picks up the dress in question.

As Peggy begins to slip out of her slacks, Angie crosses the room to flop face first onto the bed, landing atop the pile of Peggy's clothes there. "When do we go?" she mumbles into the various fabrics.

Glancing at the bedside clock, Peggy replies, "Forty minutes," then moves to unbutton her shirt.

"Good," Angie yawns, wriggling further atop the bed, careful not to ruin her hair and makeup with the kind of expertise born from years of experience sleeping in impromptu situations. "Just enough time for a power nap. Wake me in half an hour."

With amusement and no small measure of fondness, Peggy shakes her head. Stepping into her dress, she muses on how even in the mere two minutes Angie has been home she's managed to calm Peggy's nerves, the anxiety that has plagued Peggy for the last half hour melting away, leaving only a faint impression of it behind. And even that seems insignificant when Angie begins to snore softly, her feet—still clad in glittering high heeled shoes—dangling over the side of the mattress.

Thirty minutes later night has well and truly fallen, and Peggy almost feels guilty about waking her up. As soon as Peggy's' hand gently shakes Angie's calf, however, Angie jolts awake with a mumbled, "I'm up!"

Peggy sits next to her on the bed while Angie sits upright. "You don't have to come, you know. I'd understand if you wanted to stay and sleep."

"I know. And I appreciate that." Angie leans in and presses a kiss to Peggy's cheek. For a moment she lingers, reaching over to give Peggy's fingers a squeeze. "Come on. Let's go."

* * *

The drive is, as always, longer than Peggy expects, and over and over every doubt, every wrong scenario plays over in her mind in a recursive drone. But each time the thoughts manage to creep up, Angie's hand will settle on her thigh or over Peggy's hand resting on the gear stick, as if she can tell exactly what Peggy is thinking.

It's comforting, knowing that there is someone else who at the very least understands how much this weighs on Peggy, and by the time they arrive, she's ready to face the mess she's made head on.

Except the scene she's met with is the very last she expected.

When they arrive at the house in Westchester County, the place is dark. Even the streetlights have been blown, casting a sinister shadow across the block. A frisson traces its cold touch down Peggy's spine, sending a shiver threading through her.

Peggy slows the car right down, dimming the lights and pulling over across the road. Her brows furrow. "Something's not right," she mutters, hands gripping the steering wheel tight.

Angie frowns at her, then cranes her neck to look around Peggy and at the house. "What's wrong?"

"I'm not sure. It feels—" Peggy's mouth twists, every instinct telling her to go, and  _now_ , and without warning she moves, startling Angie, kicking off her heeled shoes and viciously ripping a line down one side of her dress. Reaching for her purse, she pulls her gun free. "Stay here," she orders without looking at Angie.

"Like hell," Angie declares, glaring at her incredulously.

Peggy looks over, fixing her in place with a hard, dangerous gaze. "This isn't up for discussion. You will stay here. For your own safety."

"So, what? You're just going to bust through the door? Guns blazing? Because you have a  _feeling?"_

Teeth clenched, Peggy growls, "If necessary. Yes."

"In that case, I'm definitely going with you. Oh, don't look at me like that!" Angie snaps. "You really want to face your kids alone after you've kicked down their front door?"

Peggy purses her lips, eyes darting up and down the street for any sign of movement. She doesn't have time for arguments. Something is wrong and she has to  _go,_  and this way at least she can keep Angie in her sights as well. "Alright. Fine. But you'll do exactly as I say. Without question."

When Angie's mouth opens, Peggy gives her a look, and Angie huffs. "Ok, ok."

"Promise me, Angie. Whatever I say."

Angie's looking at the house, but she turns back to Peggy. "I promise," she says deliberately.

Without another word, Peggy opens the door and swings her legs over the side of the seat. The door closes softly behind her, careful not to make too much noise, and thankfully Angie follows suit even going so far as to leave her heels behind so they don't clack across the pavement. Peggy grazes her finger across the side of the trigger as they cross the street and ascend the stairs to the front door, hands steady, alert, ready to take aim and fire at a moment's notice.

Slowly, Peggy tests the handle to see if it's unlocked. "Stay behind me," she whispers. Not waiting for a reply, she raises her gun and silently opens the front door.

Two bulky silhouettes in dark tactical gear shoulder rifles and move through the foyer further into the house just in front of her. The first one she shoots twice without hesitation. He goes down in a spray of blood from his neck, artery severed, twitching and bleeding out on the carpet. His partner makes a dash around a corner and into the living room to get cover from her fire.

In the silence that has descended over the entire neighbourhood, Peggy listens over the thudding of her heart for any sign of how many people there are or where they might be. But there is nothing, and she casts a faint hope into the universe that the intruder she hasn't managed to shoot yet is it.

Because if there is anyone else, what she's about to do might cost her everything, but if she does nothing, Peggy's fairly certain that price has already been paid.

Peggy edges them into the foyer, shielded by the door, and then pushes the Walther PPK — her only weapon — into Angie's hands. "Go!"

For a brief, shocked moment Angie stares down at it, then gathers up her long dress with her other hand and, with a single look at Peggy, sprints up to where Peggy hopes the kids are hiding in their rooms.

There's no time for the threatening terror to take hold of her as she watches Angie hurry up the stairs. The other HYDRA agent—of that much Peggy is certain—appears at the sound, raising his rifle in the direction of Angie's dash.

He's aiming down the sights when Peggy closes distance and bats the barrel aside with the flat of her hand so that the rifle goes flying. She jams her elbow into his nose, and he staggers back. He recovers quickly and lands a solid blow in her gut. In many ways he's a far more sophisticated fighter in closer quarters, and when he spins to kick her in the chest Peggy is sent sprawling.

Crashing down on the coffee table, she lands flat on her back. She can feel the ashtray digging into her spine, but doesn't have time to groan about it because the HYDRA agent is standing over her, wielding a large metal candlestick like a club. Rolling to one side, she narrowly dodges it, picking up a hard-backed book entitled ' _View of Fashion'_  as she goes. The next swing comes down heavily, and she raises the book between her hands, catching the candlestick, though the force of the blow shivers down her arms.

He rears back for another attack, and Peggy scrambles up, launching herself at him and taking him by the middle in a tackle. Teeth clenched, she drives him back until they're crashing into a nearby bookcase. Glass and bits of wood splinter off, and a number of Helen's precious porcelain Lladró figurines shatter. Peggy raises the book still in her hand as her opponent struggles, and jams the spine of the book into his neck so that his head slams backwards.

A gurgle of pain squirms from him, but then he's jamming his fingers into her eyes, and she spins away before any real lasting damage can be done. As she whirls around, he's snatching up one of the porcelain figurines and smashes it against the side of her face. Clutching at her cheek and jaw, she lurches in retreat, trying to regain ground, but he's in hot pursuit, tugging a tactical knife free from where it's strapped to his leg.

He lunges, and she narrowly sidesteps the swipe of his blade. Using his momentum against him, Peggy hurls him against a closed door and he goes ramming through it into the downstairs study. While trying to right himself, he slips and pulls down a picture from the wall, snapping the frame into pieces. Glass crunches underfoot as he steps forward. Peggy has already torn down a curtain bracketing the study window, and is winding it between both hands.

He shifts his hold on his knife. They circle one another in the cramped enclosed space.

He feints, but she doesn't take the bait. His eyes glint in the dim cool light of the gibbous moon through the window. He has a tell: his back foot turns ever so slightly as he's about to initiate his next attack. When it happens, Peggy surges forward, wrapping the curtain around his arm and yanking so that the knife drops from his fingers and he's turned about in her grasp. He pushes back with his legs, driving her into Daniel's writing desk.

All the air leaves her body as she slams into the desk, and her knees threaten to buckle. She feels more than hears the fracture split through the grain of the wooden desk wedged into the small of her back. Still she keeps a hold on him. His heel jams onto her bare foot, scraping down her shin. A hiss of pain, but she bites through it. She fastens her arms around his neck, and he's still struggling when she wrenches his head around.

A sickening crack fills the air. His body slumps to the ground at her feet. Gasping for breath, Peggy leans on her knees. She only allows herself a moment to let her heartbeat slow by a hair before she's stepping over the body and stumbling from the room.

Blood is caking the side of her face, matting her hair. She winces as she limps, and can feel a thick crust of blood flake off from her jawline. Head injuries always did bleed the most.

There isn't a sound to be heard.

She does a quick sweep of each room as she passes through, tensing up at every doorway and peeking carefully around corners. Once Peggy's confident that the lower level is clear, she heads upstairs. During her struggle she hadn't heard anything else coming from other areas of the house, but regardless her hands are clenched into fists as she climbs the stairs, ready to burst into action at a moment's notice.

A noise to her left. Hurried whispers from the master bedroom. She hears a bang and a soft cry. Sudden panic seizes her at the thought that one of them might have —

She doesn't finish the thought. Instead Peggy rounds the corner and finds herself face to face with a gun.

Angie's hands shake, and she heaves a sigh of relief, lowering the firearm when she sees who it is. "It's you. Oh, thank god."

Elizabeth and Richard both peer out from behind Angie, eyes huge, from where the three of them are crowded together on the other side of Daniel and Helen's bed. They're still in their pajamas, hair mussed from sleep. In the dark they look both younger and older all at once; the shadows deepen across their cheeks and eyes.

Peggy opens her mouth to assure them that everything's alright, but Angie's eyes grow wide, staring over her shoulder. Behind her the floorboards creak.

Whirling around, Peggy's fist is blocked by another HYDRA agent's forearm. It's a woman this time, if the slight stature is any indication. Like her fellows however, the lower half of her face is covered in a dark mask, hair bound tightly back to avoid any grappling. Peggy twists out of the way to evade the counter attack, but isn't quite quick enough. The impact lands in the soft area between ribs and hips, narrowly missing her kidney.

With a choked grunt of pain Peggy lashes out with her foot, catching her opponent in the knee. The scuffle that ensues is brief but vicious. Trading rapid blows, Peggy forces her into the hallway, away from Angie and the twins.

In less than a minute, the HYDRA agent has her pinned up against the wall in the hallway, Peggy gasping for breath, fingers tightening around her throat.

Ten years ago, Peggy would have had her opponent knocked flat. The thought is absolutely aggravating, that time would make all her efforts for naught when it came down to the wire, and she grapples at the HYDRA agent's forearms with one hand, while the other slips down to fumble at the agent's thigh, where she knows a knife is strapped.

In a dull flash, she jabs it up in a quick strike. The blade stabs up through the woman's jaw, and blood slicks the handle in Peggy's palm.

The woman's body sags against Peggy, who is still leaning against the wall, head flung back, breathing raggedly in sharp short bursts of air. Leaving the knife in place, she pushes the body away from her and it drops back heavily to the floor. As soon as the weight is no longer propping her up, Peggy staggers and almost falls. Her legs tremble and she has to steady herself on the wall, leaving a bloody, smeared handprint behind.

As she turns to limp back towards the master bedroom however, she freezes. Angie is there, trying to herd the kids back into the bedroom, but they're staring wide-eyed at the body and at Peggy, ragged and wounded, shards of glass embedded in her forearms, blood dripping from the line of her jaw, panting for breath.

Almost a decade has passed since she left this house believing it would prevent the very thing that just happened from occurring. Exhausted to the point of shaking, Peggy sinks down against the wall, and for the first time she wonders if perhaps everything she's done was in fact utterly worthless.

* * *

 

It takes only a single short phone call for a horde of junior agents and one of SHIELD's expert cleaning crews to arrive at the scene and begin working their magic. In the hallway just outside the living room, Peggy delivers orders in sharp, crisp words to people who know exactly what they're supposed to be doing without her direction. They scrub tiles and walls, they photograph bodies and corridors, and they go over every surface for any bit of evidence with the sort of meticulous care their positions require.

If only they could wipe away memories as easily, Peggy finds herself thinking grimly. Surely Howard could invent such a thing. It can't be difficult to just pluck terrible things from a person's mind and just—

Standing around doing nothing is definitely not an option for her at this point. The enemies are dead, but adrenaline still thrums in her system, driving her to a prowling restlessness that has her marking the carpet with fresh bloody footprints.

Her children are within her line of vision at all times, just a handful of steps away in the living room, seated either side of Angie on the couch she ushered them to when the agents started arriving. Peggy can see her talking softly to them, though she can't hear what they're saying. Whenever either Elizabeth or Richard looks in her direction, Peggy's eyes dart away.

She can barely stomach the thought of facing them now. After all of this—

"There's a military term for this, I think," a familiar voice says from the front door. " _Situation Normal: All Fucked Up._  Or more appropriately: SNAFU."

Peggy internally groans when she recognises who has arrived. "Lord, who called you?"

"Anna. Who else?"

The SHIELD medic at the door is none other than Alexander Pierce, one of SHIELD's younger members who haunts headquarters since he hasn't yet been released for field duty. In spite of his impeccable background and numerous degrees and competence, Peggy has always viewed him with distaste. He's ambitious and young and brilliant, and Howard always did like those sort for entirely vain reasons. Regardless, Pierce has treated her in the past more times than she'd care to count, his face appearing whenever she so much as bruises an elbow against her desk.

"Your services aren't required," Peggy growls, before pointing at a junior agent cleaning blood from the stairwell. "And don't forget between the balustrade!"

Pierce glances down at where Peggy is tracking blood across the floor, the slow drip from her forearms to the slope of her wrists, the tremble of clotted gore squeezed between her fingers as she clenches her fists. "Perhaps the clean-up crew would be more effective if you stopped raining all over their parade, so to speak."

"I'm fine," Peggy grits the words between her teeth.

But he's in no way fazed by the daggers she's glaring in his direction. "With all due respect, ma'am, that's for me to judge. Now, please, sit. I insist."

One hand holding a bag of supplies, he uses the other to shoo her into the living room. It's the very last place she wants to be, where Richard and Elizabeth can watch her being fawned and pampered over like some sort of bumbling cadet. When she spots the relief on one of the clean-up crew's faces however, Peggy grudgingly relents.

Trudging into the other room, Peggy finds herself the immediate center of attention. All quiet conversation between Angie and the twins comes to a grinding halt. The three of them turn to stare, and Peggy freezes, rooted in place.

"Ma'am, please—" Pierce begins, making as if to put his hand on her elbow to lead her to a nearby chair.

"Don't touch me," Peggy snarls, wrenching her arm away.

"Peg," Angie says softly from the other side of the room. "Maybe you should let yourself be cleaned up a bit." And she gives both Peggy and the twins a pointed look to drive her meaning home.

Shoulders tense, Peggy gives a curt nod and lowers herself onto the edge of the chair — one of the only pieces of furniture that remains untouched, and now it's stained with sticky blood stains from where Peggy's ripped skirt is patched with red. She sits stiffly while Pierce opens up his bag. Soon he's dabbing at her face with something that stings like the devil, where the porcelain figurine had been smashed against her cheek and brow. She fights back a reflexive jerk away and allows the worst of it to be wiped clean.

The strained silence in the room that follows is deafening. Until—

"So you're some kind of...super spy?" Elizabeth asks, slumped against the couch in a way that leaves her partially hidden behind Angie.

"Don't be ridiculous," Peggy snaps in a tone reserved for the junior agents scurrying around upstairs, finally giving into the urge to move away from fingers tending to her face.

"But—" Richard starts, sitting up. "You just—"

"Okay," Peggy cuts him off, before meeting Angie's encouraging look. "Okay."

She did, after all, come here to have some other version of this conversation with them. The version that doesn't involve Peggy covered in blood and her children practically hiding behind a woman who is a stranger to them.

She steadies herself with a deep breath. As she does so, Pierce kneels down and begins carefully picking shards of glass from her arms, depositing the shattered pieces safely away in a container so that her next words are punctuated by tiny clinks of glass against hard plastic and pricks of pain that give her something else to focus on.

"I run the world's largest spy and anti-terrorist organisations. One of the largest, anyway. Before that I was a field agent, along with a whole host of other positions I can't rightly mention. Suffice it to say, I am very well qualified." She hisses when Pierce fishes a particularly large slab of glass from her arm, and her reproachful glare slides right off of him. In the pause, she accidentally catches sight of the children, somehow more shell-shocked at her words than what they witnessed earlier.

"So, a super spy," Elizabeth says again, mustering a hard, defensive look.

Peggy has to stop from snapping, and only manages to do so because she recognises Elizabeth's tone for what it is — poorly concealed curiosity. And Peggy can't deny she has every right to it, and has for years now.

"I suppose," she finally concedes, pausing to lick at a cut in her lip. "In the very loosest sense."

Had she looked away for even a second, Peggy might have missed the look that Elizabeth gives her then: awe and horror and relief all mingled together. They pass across her face swift as a shadow before she can reign her emotions back under control once again, locking them away until all she reveals are years worth of walls.

"Then why—" Richard starts, but noises from the front door make Peggy's head whip around, alert.

"You folks can't be in here. I'm going to have to ask you to leave." Peggy can hear Agent Bauer's voice from the foyer, and she squeezes her eyes shut.

Of course Daniel and Helen have returned now to find their house in a complete and utter shambles, right as the three bodies are being carted out in black bags for an invasive autopsy procedure back at the labs in SHIELD headquarters.

"This is my house!" Daniel insists, his words rushed in panic. "Where's Peggy? Where the hell are my kids?  _Elizabeth! Richard!"_ He shouts, trying to peer around the agent blocking their entry.

Peggy stands up and rounds the corner from the living room, shadowed by Pierce, looking irate at his stubborn patient. "Let them in, Agent Bauer."

"Ma'am." Immediately stepping aside, Bauer lets them pass.

Daniel makes a break for the twins, while Helen takes a tentative step over the footprints Peggy left earlier.

"What on Earth have you done?" she asks, already willing to take up the mantle of scandalised.

But Peggy cannot muster even the slightest of damns, and heads back into the living room. Helen trails after her, letting out a noise in the back of her throat like a strangled gasp at the sight of the room. Glass and broken furniture litters the entire space, and Peggy's bare feet continue to leave bloody prints all along the carpet.

Angie is still holding the Walther PPK and wearing her fine, glittering evening gown as she stands off to the side, having given up her seat for Daniel between his children, and Peggy very much wishes she wouldn't stand so far away.

"Director Carter, for the last time, I need you to sit down and remain still." Pierce shoves at Peggy's shoulders with both hands so that she folds back onto the chair.

Scowling up at Pierce, Peggy nevertheless stays seated on the edge of the chair while he begins stitching up the side of her face. Most of the blood has been cleaned away, but the wounds are still fresh across her cheek, brow, arms and feet. Then she clears her throat and says, "You're back early."

Helen is beside herself. "Is that all you have to say?" Her voice climbs in pitch with every syllable, "Look at this place! What  _happened?_ "

Peggy winces, though whether it's from the needle threading through her upper cheek or from Helen's voice is unclear. "My job followed me home," she admits.

"Your—? You mean the  _government_ agency?" Helen echoes incredulously.

"Yes," Peggy replies, and she sounds icy, even though she feels anything but.

Daniel just sighs, looking as distressed as Peggy feels. His initial panic at the door has drained away, having seen that the kids are alright, and now he gives Peggy this disappointed look. Peggy responds with a helpless little lift of one shoulder, as if she's trying to shrug the disappointment right off, but it's cottoning onto her very skin.

"This is why I left, Daniel," she reminds him, her carefully constructed facade beginning to crack at the edges.

She knows they're all staring, and she can't bear to meet any of their eyes — least of all the children's. She tries to turn her head away to look at the floor instead, but Pierce jerks her face back up with his fingers on her chin.

Glaring up at him, she growls, "Manhandle me again, and I'll add you to my bodycount tonight."

His response is a delicate, disdainful sniff and a snip of scissors as he finishes off the stitches. "You say that every time, Director Carter, and yet here I stand."

With a rough-voiced huff Peggy shakes her head, and allows him to start removing shards of glass from her feet.

Still not looking up at the others, she announces, "I'll be out of your hair again soon. My agents will need to finish their evaluation of the area, and then I'll make sure people come around to clean the place up. You will be fully reimbursed for any and all damages the property sustained."

"What about you?" Daniel asks, one arm draped around the shoulders of each kid. Normally they would have shrugged off such physical affection off, but tonight they allow it.

Pierce is daubing the cuts on her arms with a stinging solution, and wrapping them up; the damage is too widespread for simple patches. He makes to wrap up her feet, but she jerks them away, crossing them beneath her. Blood trickles between two toes, seeping into the carpet. She ignores the sharp pain in her right foot.

With a look of revulsion, Helen leaves the room, and for a moment Peggy wishes she could follow her. If only because Richard and Elizabeth are looking at her with something that can only properly be called fear.

"I suppose—" Peggy finally answers, but has to stop to swallow thickly, tucking a lock of loose hair behind her ear. "I suppose I'll go."

"Peggy," Angie says softly, her tone a mixture of pleading and admonishing, finally giving up her place loitering at the edges of the room to stand beside Peggy's chair.

"Director Carter," Pierce interjects, "there's a minor fracture in your right foot—"

"Yes, thank you," she snaps, having thoroughly had enough of Pierce's fussing, and finally finding a place to direct some of her current turmoil. "You've done more than enough. That will be all."

To his credit, Pierce seems to recognise the difference between Peggy's annoyance and her true limit for tolerating his presence, and he leaves without further complaints.

"Can you drive me back to the apartment?" she directs at Angie, fighting through the waver in the back of her throat. "If not, Agent Bauer can escort you back to your hotel, and I'll—"

Leaning over, Angie's hand covers her own where they twist together in her lap, knuckles scraped raw and pink. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm taking you."

Nodding, Peggy clambers upright, careful not to put too much weight on her right foot. She doesn't need to look down to know that it's swollen up; she can tell by the way each heartbeat pulses through it that it's fractured. With every passing year the aches and scrapes seem to take a larger toll. She isn't as resilient as she once was.

"Agent Bauer," she says, limping towards the foyer and the front door, Angie close behind her. "Keep watch here tonight after the others leave. I doubt HYDRA will send anymore agents after the fiasco tonight, but—"

Spine straightening to attention, he replies, "Not a problem, ma'am." He even hurries ahead of her to get the door.

Peggy hesitates at the threshold of the living room and the foyer. One hand steadies herself on the doorway, and she glances over her shoulder at Daniel and the kids on the couch. Neither of them pay her any mind, and she wonders if this will be the last time she ever shares a room with them.

In the opposite entryway Helen has reappeared, clutching the handle of a broom like a lifeline as she hovers behind the couch. As Peggy turns to go, she catches sight of her leaning down to press a mothering kiss to the top of Richard's head.

Biting her lip, Peggy leaves, Angie's hand a comforting weight on the small of her back.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

 _J_ _une 1949_ —  _Kings County, New York_

Domesticity suits Peggy like an ill-fitting shirt. The uncomfortable stretch across her shoulders. The restriction of movement when she reaches her arms. The pull of fabric when she lifts up on her toes. She settles into it about as well as can be expected.

Somehow she thought it would be easier than this. It isn't that she ever thought she would excel at it. Only that she isn't forgiving of failure—least of all from herself.

It's well into the first year of their marriage when Peggy stumbles through the front door of their brightly lit apartment wearing her full dark-washed tactical gear. Not for the first time. Certainly not for the last.

At least this time she remembers to take her mud-caked boots off in the vestibule, leaning one hand against the wall to kick them off and inadvertently leaving a streak of dirt in the shape of her palm across the striped wallpaper. When she notices what she's done, she grimaces at the mark and tries using the edge of her sleeve to scrub it clean, succeeding only in making it worse in the process. She tells herself she'll clean it properly before going back to work tomorrow morning.

The sound of the door closing announces her presence and Daniel's voice calls out from the other room, "Did you remember to pick up some horseradish?"

Panic flares like a scratched match for a moment, and Peggy pats herself down until she remembers she crammed the little jar of horseradish into a pocket of her cross-draw vest on her way back from the field. She breathes a sigh of relief as she pulls it free, raising her voice to reply, "Of course I did!"

Making her way further into the apartment, the smells of cooking grow stronger. When Peggy enters the kitchen she's greeted with the sight of Daniel's back to her. He has a flower-printed hand towel flung artfully over one shoulder and a matching apron belted around his waist as he stirs the contents of a frying pan.

Peggy leans over to present him with the jar and Daniel does a double take over his shoulder. "Jesus, Peg. Did the neighbors see you?"

"I'm wearing camo," she replies dryly, putting the horseradish down and dabbing one of her fingers in the gravy thickening in the saucepan, bringing it quickly to her mouth.

He frowns at her grimey hands. "In the middle of  _Brooklyn_. You think people won't notice?"

Rolling her eyes, she leans her shoulder on the edge of the refrigerator. "Honestly, I think they see stranger things every day."

"You have bruises on your jaw. People are going to think I—" He cuts off short, teeth clenching, and he looks away quickly as though he can't even bear to speak the thought aloud. He gives the gravy an unnecessarily hard stir.

She doesn't even know what to say to that. The notion is so preposterous it had genuinely never occurred to her. Before they were married, Peggy always had excuses stowed away until they were needed: an overenthusiastic revolving door, the clip of a cobblestone on her heel. It didn't matter, because she didn't have anyone who would take the blame. But now—

"What do you expect me to do?" She can't keep the defensive edge from her voice. "It's either this or I roll over and come home with broken bones. Or worse."

He scrapes the wooden spatula against the base of the saucepan, spilling gravy onto the stovetop, and mutters, "You came back with a fractured wrist eleven weeks ago."

"That was—!" Peggy pushes away from the refrigerator and crosses her arms. "Ever since you've left for the FBI you've been completely—!"

When she bites back the words and refuses to finish, Daniel rounds on her, spatula in hand. "No, go on! I've been  _what_ , exactly?"

Shoulders straightening, Peggy nods her chin a fraction higher. "You ran. From SHIELD. From me. And for what?" She sneers, "A desk job? Under Hoover, of all people!"

"We got married," he counters just as sharply. Behind him the gravy begins to bubble. "I couldn't just—!"

Peggy's eyes go flinty. "Work under me? I worked under you for over a year when you were Chief at the SSR!"

"Yes! And had we been married at the time I wouldn't have been surprised if you'd done the same thing!" The towel on his shoulder begins to slip, so he reaches up with his free hand and throws it onto the bench.

"I never complained," she reminds him sharply. "Not once. I respected your decisions and your position."

Shrugging in acceptance, Daniel says, "Maybe. But you resented it. Every minute of it. Knowing you could've done the job better. Knowing that there was only one reason why I was picked for Chief and you weren't."

"I was glad for you! And I have always risen on account of merit. My position as Director of SHIELD is no different."

With a scornful huff, he shakes his head. "Come on, Peg! You and Stark have been pals since the War!"

"Just what are you implying?" Peggy stares at him incredulously, uncrossing her arms to plant her hands on her hips. She can't believe they're having this conversation after almost four years since— "Was the interrogation room at the SSR not enough? There has never been anything between me and Howard bloody Stark! And there never will be!"

Squeezing his eyes shut in frustration, Daniel's brows furrow and he reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "That's not what I meant!"

"Then what do you mean? God—!" Her voice dips, slipping on a note deep in her chest. "Daniel, what do you want from me?"

"I want you to be  _safe!"_

In his clenched fist the wooden spatula trembles. Breathing heavily, they both stare at one another across the kitchen, the only sound the boiling of the saucepan's contents, and then the shrill whine of the egg timer.

Swallowing thickly, Daniel is the first to look away, turning off the stovetop and snatching up a pair of bright yellow mittens to pull a roast from the oven.

Peggy watches him stab the roast with a thermometer. "I'm being as safe as I know how. There's no beauty in my line of work. You know that better than anyone. But you can't expect me to drop everything and quit to stay at home."

Tossing the thermometer into the nearby sink, Daniel gives a derisive snort. "You're not exactly little wife material, Peg." His eyes drift pointedly across her attire, settling briefly on the tactical knife strapped to her thigh.

He's joking — Peggy knows he is — but it doesn't stop her from drawling, "Oh, I suppose you'd prefer me barefoot and pregnant, giving you a pack of little brats?"

Daniel laughs, and the sound is tired. Then he asks softly, "Would that really be so bad?" At the look of blank horror on Peggy's face he quickly amends his previous statement. "Not the first part.  _Jesus._ I mean: kids wouldn't be so — You know what? Forget I said anything."

With that he clears his throat and busies himself with rummaging through a drawer for the carving knife.

For a moment Peggy can only stand there and stare at him as he studiously avoids her gaze. All at once she feels remarkably out of place in her own home — hair pulled back into a bedraggled bunch at the base of her neck, her camouflage bulky with scuffed padded armour and stained with dirt — and it's the first time she can remember such a feeling. When she speaks it's almost as if she's hearing her own voice from a distance.

"It wouldn't be so bad."

She has absolutely no idea where that came from, what unexplored corner of her mind was being given speech. It's true though. Even as Peggy says it, she knows it to be unquestionably sincere.

The question of  _why_ doesn't actually occur to her. Except that when Daniel mentioned it she couldn't think of  _why not_. Now the more she turns the idea over, the more it seems to appeal to her. The thought of a legacy, of something persevering beyond herself. Something enduring and alive. The opposite of everything else in her life, whether it be an unfeeling organisation or lost in fields of ice.

Daniel is holding the carving knife poised over the roast, and he's looking at her with an inscrutable expression. Then he carefully places the knife aside, turning to face her fully. "You mean that?"

"Yes." It comes out faintly, and she repeats it again with more conviction. "Yes, I do."

Slowly he nods, and his face relaxes into a wry smile. He opens his mouth to speak, but then shakes his head in amusement.

"What's so funny?" Peggy asks, unable to keep a self-conscious burr from her voice.

He laughs gently. "I just never imagined this would be how we'd have this conversation. That's all."

"Yes. Well." Peggy shuffles her feet, masking her mild embarrassment with a toss of her head and a firm set of her jaw. "Do you need me to set the table?"

Daniel's eyes crinkle around the edges and he turns his attention back to the final dinner preparations. "Please."

As she's reaching up to pull plates from a cabinet, Peggy says, "If we do go through with it, we'll need a bigger place eventually. Preferably in a safe neighborhood. And with good schools."

"Look at that. Two minutes into the idea, and already you're worrying. I'm shocked." He shoots her an amused glance over his shoulder while he spoons vegetables into a serving dish. When his words are met only with silence, he pauses and looks over to see Peggy frowning down at the plates in her hands.

Peggy starts and almost drops the plates when she feels a warm comforting hand at the small of her waist. Blinking she whips her head around to find Daniel there, looking faintly ridiculous in that flowery apron over his usual sweater vest.

"Hey," he says, soft and reassuring. "You'd make a great mother. You know that, right?"

She thinks of SHIELD, of finally taking strides in making the world a place where any children of hers could be safe, and she returns his smile with one of her own. The corners of her mouth have a nervous tilt she can't quite hide, but she kisses him regardless and murmurs. "Thank you, darling."

 

* * *

* * *

 

That night Peggy sleeps like the dead.

When she wakes it's slowly, grudgingly. Her eyelids stick together like they've been glued shut, and her entire body feels like one big ache. With a feeble groan she pushes herself into a seated position. The bed beside her is empty. Peering blearily around, she swings her feet over the side. When she tries to stand, pains spears up her leg. She nearly falls and has to catch herself on a bedpost.

Right. Her foot. She'd almost forgotten.

Peggy watches her toes wiggle back and forth for a while, letting herself feel the roll of pain with each flex of muscle.

Eventually, she leans over to slide open the bedside table, fishing out a bottle of painkillers and tipping two small, white pills into her palm. She throws them back with the glass of water conveniently set there by Angie the night before. When she drags the blue robe over herself, the silk catches on the scratchy gauze around her arms. She's belting it around her waist when she limps out of the bedroom.

"Morning," Angie greets her from the couch. She's already dressed for the day, and Peggy wonders exactly how late she has slept. "Howard rang up earlier and told me to tell you to take a recovery day. No exceptions."

"I think on this occasion I won't argue," Peggy mumbles sleepily. She swallows and can still feel the finger-shaped bruising around her throat. "God, everything hurts."

She shuffles to the couch and sinks gingerly onto it, wincing as every ache and pain flares up across her body. Beside her, Angie's brow knits in concern, and Peggy can't stand it, tilting sideways to lean her head against Angie's shoulder.

Angie takes the move as permission to wrap herself around Peggy's arm, cradling the part covered in bandages. "I know last night you said you were okay," Angie says. "But I saw what happened out in that hallway, Peg."

She doesn't want to talk about it.

But the whole way home, lying in bed before she quickly dropped off to sleep, even now as they're sitting pressed together, Peggy can feel the shiver in Angie's touch. She swallows harshly, letting her fingers lock together with the ones toying with the edge of her sleeve.

"I will be."

It's a wider concession than she has ever made to anyone. But it's Angie, and she makes it more easily than she could ever imagine herself doing with anyone else.

Angie seems to recognise what Peggy's admitting to, head tilting to rest against Peggy's. "Okay, then," she says, soft and sad, before sniffing harshly as she sits up, blinking away the beginning of tears. "You know the doctor said you should change your bandages. And something tells me you haven't."

"If I listened to everything that quack said, I'd never leave the house," Peggy grumbles, letting the moment come to an end, and lifts her injured foot onto the coffee table with a low groan.

One eyebrow raised, Angie stands and disappears into the dining room, returning with a bundle of gauze that she waves her hand imperiously. "Sleeves up. And no buts!"

Peggy's mouth snaps shut, about to complain, and instead she glares. She still shakes the wide silk sleeves of her robe back and holds her arms out, though she can't keep her glare in place when Angie starts carefully unwrapping them. As the lines of livid red across Peggy's skin is revealed, Angie slowly re-wraps them with clean white gauze, tossing the old ones onto the coffee table.

A soft knock sounds at the front door before a key scrapes in the lock. When the front door opens, Peggy has to squint through the bright light streaming through the apartment. She's sure she didn't receive a concussion last night, and yet there stand Richard and Elizabeth.

"I—" Peggy withdraws one hand to rub at her eyes with the heel of her palm in confusion, and squints from the couch, "Was I supposed to take you to school?"

As she says it, she realises it's a Saturday. That'll be the painkillers talking.

They stare at her from the doorway, and it's a repeat performance from a week ago. Peggy realises she must look a fright with her face smudged with sleep and bruises and sensitive stitches, bruises on her throat, one foot swollen up like a melon. And her hair must be an awful mess, but at least this time she's partially dressed.

Except this time, their visit is different.

"Can we come in?" Richard asks.

For a moment Peggy does nothing but blink at them. "Yes, of course."

When they enter the apartment and close the door behind them, Angie peers over her shoulder and offers a sunny smile. "Glad you could make it!" When Peggy gives her a stern, disbelieving look, Angie explains, "Hey, it wasn't my idea. They rang ahead saying they were coming over."

On any other occasion Peggy would have offered food or drink, but today she keeps holding her arms out for Angie. The twins stare at the old gauze, crumpled atop the wood, stained with old blood.

"I thought we could all have breakfast," Angie says, a note of question in her voice. "If you're up for it."

Still hovering near the front door, Richard nudges his sister with his elbow. Elizabeth rolls her eyes at him, but says, "We wanted to see how you were."

"Ah," Peggy says simply. Not knowing quite what to do, she has to stop herself from fidgeting as Angie finishes tucking the last of the bandages in place around her wrists. Finally she manages, "Thank you. I'm — well, I've been better. But I think I'll live."

With a triumphant, " _There!"_ Angie gathers up the old bandages, but before she turns back towards the kitchen to give Peggy and the twins some space, she arches an eyebrow at Peggy and gives her a meaningful look. The stubborn, brook-no-nonsense kind so that Peggy knows she means business.

In response Peggy lowers her arms and says weakly, "Thank you, Angie."

There's a pleading note in her voice she's ashamed of, but she can't help the spark of terror kindling in the pit of her stomach when Angie leaves her all alone with her children. A part of Peggy desperately wants Angie to stay, even if Angie's only going into the other room to begin cooking breakfast.

"Does your father know you're here?" Peggy breaches the silence with an easy topic. It's cowardly, she knows. She can tell by the way they're looking at her now, expectant yet disappointed that this is what she's chosen to open with.

"Yeah," Richard says, at the same time Elizabeth huffs, "Of  _course._ "

"Oh. Good." Peggy is fiddling with the bandages that loop around her thumbs now, and her fingers tremble.

She doesn't know how to talk to them. She doesn't know how to unpack sixteen years of their lives and her not being in them. They're shuffling their feet in the entryway, and already they look like they're regretting coming over here in the first place.

So Peggy squeezes her eyes shut and bites the bullet.

"You can sit down," she says, uncomfortable with the way they're simply standing there, looking down at her.

Richard takes the seat opposite, directly in front of Peggy, giving her a wary smile as he does. As she returns it, she's surprised when Elizabeth moves to sit, not in the chair beside her brother, but to Peggy's right on the couch.

"Last night, I told you I ran—"

"SHIELD," Richard says, sitting forward. "That's what the— agents? Their badges said SHIELD."

"Right." God, she wasn't prepared for this. "And you can't— either of you— tell anyone about this. You saw last night, my work is dangerous, and part of it being less dangerous is that it's a secret."

"Does Angie know what you do?" Elizabeth counters.

"Does  _Dad?"_ Richard adds. Of the two of them, he seems to be more astounded than anything, though Peggy can't quite get a read on Elizabeth yet.

Not that she's ever succeeded in doing so before.

"Of course your father knows. He used to work with me before I started SHIELD." Peggy answers in an off-handed way, and both Richard and Elizabeth's eyes widen.

Peggy supposes that—despite the war stories Daniel likes telling at dinner parties—it's easier for them to think of their disabled father as a glorified desk-jockey. Or that she had stumbled up the ladder, rather than build it herself.

Clearing her throat, Elizabeth shifts on the couch, hesitant. "So," she starts off falteringly, "Were you in the war, too?"

"Which one?" Peggy asks dryly. Her eyes flicker between them, watching her with a rapt attention to rival even that at dinner a few weeks ago, when she admitted to knowing Angie. Peggy gives them each a halting smile, then says, "If you mean the Second World War — yes."

With a sigh Peggy leans her head back against the couch. "I told you last night I was a field agent, but I didn't mention that I was a field agent with the SSR during the war, with—" Cutting herself off, Peggy flounders for the right words before finally sucking in a deep breath and forging on. "And after."

"But the war was over." Richard points out slowly.

A bitter laugh escapes her then. "Last night was just a taste of how much the war is not over."

She sighs at the ceiling, and when she sits up they both look— "I'm sorry," she says quickly. "I don't mean to— Look. There are people in the world who do horrible things. That's why I do my job."

"None of that explains why you left  _us."_  Where Peggy would've expected such an accusing tone from Elizabeth, she's flummoxed when it comes from Richard.

"Because some of those people would hurt  _you_  if it meant hurting me, and I—" Here Peggy steadies herself with a deep breath but she has to bite her lower lip before forging on, and even then she can't look up at Richard and Elizabeth. "I couldn't live with myself if that were to happen."

"That's what happened, isn't it," Elizabeth says slowly, as if remembering something she'd forgotten. "That night. There was a man in the house, and you…."

Elizabeth's look pierces right through Peggy, knowing that the worst night of her life is somewhere in Elizabeth's distant memory, too.

The edge of one bandage starts to fray as she plucks nervously at it, fingernails tearing into the fabric so that her voice remains steady. It's a tactic that's quickly failing. "I—I love you both very much. I always have," she manages to say, but she has to pause to swallow thickly. "And more than anything, I wanted to be there."

Silence greets her confession, and she closes her eyes, reaching for the only thing she has left to make this okay. "I am sorry, you know." With a sniff, she looks at them again, and offers them a watery smile.

"Mom," Elizabeth says, the name sticking in her throat. "We didn't know."

Peggy swipes at her cheeks and corrects her, "I never told you."

"God," Richard huffs into the awkward silence, slumping forward with his face in his hands. "I thought we were just coming for breakfast."

The abruptness makes Peggy laugh, lightheaded from the sudden shift in the mood, though the feeling is mirrored on both of her children's faces. "That'll be a first time you come to  _me_ for a home-cooked meal."

"We knew you'd have company. Else we would've brought take-out," Elizabeth replies dryly.

Peggy snorts. She always could trust Elizabeth's bluntness to break the mood. "What are you making, Angie?" she calls out, tipping her head back against the couch.

"Eggs in Purgatory," comes the response, and from the kitchen Peggy can hear the smart crack of eggshells against an edge.

"How do you make it?" Richard asks, already moving into the other room to observe.

"Easy as pie," Angie answers. "Grate the parmesan for me, won't you?"

She doesn't need to ask twice; Richard's already digging the cheese out from the fridge, eager to please.

That leaves Elizabeth wringing her hands in her lap and chewing her lower lip, at a complete loss for something to say. "Do you want a cup of tea?" she finally asks weakly. "That's what British people like, right?"

With a huff of laughter Peggy murmurs, "No, thank you, darling. And I haven't really been British for—"

In the kitchen, Angie pauses whatever she's doing to admonish, "Shut up, English. You like tea."

Mouth twisting into a surly line, Peggy settles lower on the couch and mumbles, "I suppose tea wouldn't go amiss."

If anything Elizabeth looks relieved to have something to do other than sit there, but in a minute she's back, handing Peggy a steaming cup of tea in such a way that their hands never touch. She didn't add any milk, but Peggy takes the tea regardless, cradling it against her chest and waiting for it to steep. Rather than stay, Elizabeth dawdles for a moment then returns to the kitchen when Richard calls her name.

Peggy lets her go with a tired smile and a quiet, "Thank you."

In spite of herself Peggy's eyes struggle to remain open. She gives her head a little shake and blinks against the cobwebs of fatigue still clinging around the corners.

She doesn't realise she's started to doze off as she stares into the cup of tea, until Angie runs a hand through her hair, and she blinks her eyes open to find Angie standing behind the couch and gazing down at her. "We're ready to eat, if you're hungry."

"Give me a hand up?" she asks, holding out her own hand for Angie to take.

Once she's standing, instead of leading the way, Angie threads her arms around Peggy's waist, squeezing as gently as she can manage to while still getting as close to Peggy as possible. As if that were even possible.

"What's this for?" Peggy asks, letting her own arms rest carefully around Angie's shoulders.

Tilting her head back, Angie places a kiss on Peggy's cheek, just below the stitches. "You done good."

Of course Angie was listening. Rather than embarrassment, Peggy's grateful for the reassurance, and she pulls Angie in closer, ignoring the twinges from myriad places about her body.

"Food's ready!" Richard chimes from the other room, carrying a cast-iron pan over to the dining room table and placing it atop a spare oven mitt. Elizabeth sets the table, carefully aligning the knives and forks over their napkins.

Reluctant, Peggy pulls back, and Angie leads her toward the dining table, where the twins are dishing up the plates. The chair Peggy settles herself into feels like it's made of nothing but edges, but she disguises her wince by laying a napkin over her lap.

There's nothing but the sound of cutlery scraping against plates as they tuck into the food with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Richard has finished an entire egg before Peggy's first mouthful is gone.

"So," Angie says, setting down her glass of juice. "Anything fun happen to anyone this week?"

To Peggy's astonishment, the twins both laugh, and Richard swallows his current mouthful to reply, "I got a job on the school paper."

"It's not a job if you don't get paid for it," Elizabeth comments, and Peggy feels the motion of Richard kicking her vibrate through the table. "You  _don't_."

"That's still a good place to start," Angie says, tossing a wink in Richard's direction, before turning to Elizabeth. "What about you, young lady?"

At the attention, Elizabeth blushes furiously, and Peggy smothers a grin with her hand before anyone can see.

"Not much," Elizabeth shrugs, stabbing her fork idly into the food on her plate. "I got an A on my French test?"

"Well that's something," Angie replies cheerfully, and Peggy could honestly kiss her for the effort. "My fun thing this week was getting fired."

The way Angie says it is so bland, the meaning almost passes by Peggy, until the words sink in. "Oh Angie, darling, your career…."

Not to mention her reason for being in New York having come to an abrupt end.

But Angie waves her concern away with a light-hearted laugh, "Don't worry about it. Everyone's box office poison at some point. Even Kay Francis and Kate Hepburn."

Setting down her cutlery, Peggy dabs at her mouth with a napkin. "So, you'll be heading back to Hollywood, I presume?" She tries to make it sound as nonchalant as possible, even if her heart is racing a mile a minute, but Angie smirks at her as though she knows exactly what Peggy's thinking.

"Well," Angie drawls around a mouthful of food before swallowing. "If someone were to make me a better offer, I could be convinced to stay."

"Do you require it on letterhead?" Peggy shoots back sarcastically.

Angie taps her finger on the table and says sternly, "On my desk no later than tomorrow morning, Director!"

Peggy gives her an arch look, but can't conceal her grin. Meanwhile Elizabeth and Richard roll their eyes, and begin stacking up the plates for delivery to the sink.

Angie leans in and whispers, "Are you sure they're your kids? They're doing dishes.  _Voluntarily._ "

Peggy smacks Angie's shoulder lightly and scoffs, "I do the dishes!"

"Doesn't count if it's under duress, honey." Angie pats her hand, then stands, "I'll help clean up. You rest."

Grumbling, Peggy hauls herself to her feet and back over to the couch. There she props her foot onto the coffee table once more — careful not to knock over the now cold cup of tea — and folds her arms. Even in her silky ankle-length robe, the apartment is pleasantly warm. Sunlight slants across her shoulders and thighs from a nearby window, and she sinks into the heat with a heavy sigh. Lulled by the warmth and the meal and the painkillers and the chatter in the distance, Peggy's eyes slowly slide shut.

She's awoken by a gentle hand on her shoulder. With a jerk her eyes snap open to see Angie standing over her again. "The kids are heading out."

"Right," Peggy mumbles, frowning and rubbing the sun from her eyes. When her hand hits the stitches high on her cheek, she hisses through her teeth, biting off a curse as the twins hover nearby.

"Hey, so, we were thinking—" Elizabeth begins, but trails off, glancing at her brother.

One of those inscrutable looks passes between them, and then Richard picks up right where she left off, "—that we might do this again. If that's alright. Next week."

With sunlight in her eyes and Angie's hand lingering on her shoulder, Peggy smiles up at them. "I'd like that."

It isn't perfect. And it isn't a guarantee. But it's a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A sincere thank you to everyone who has commented, sent asks, recced or otherwise expressed appreciation for this fic. We both appreciate it. 
> 
> Also a special thanks for @professorspork and Roman both for putting up with Ashleigh's constant agonising over every word.


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